The 2025 Beach Pro Tour Best Defensive Player is David Ahman.
Honorable Mention
- Ahmed Tijan, Qatar
- Arthur Lanci, Brazil
- Clemens Wickler, Germany
- Yorick de Groot, Netherlands
It still doesn’t make sense to Marco Krattiger, how David Ahman moves.
“I’ve never seen a guy going for a cut shot and then realize it’s a line shot coming and change direction — like, where’s your weight?” he said on a recent episode of SANDCAST. “It has to carry you! It’s not how physics works!”
Ahman evidently cares little about physics. Even during what was the “worst” year of his and Jonatan Hellvig’s still-young careers, with just two gold medals and three total medals — granted, they made one of those golds a biggie, a World Championship title — Ahman was still the runaway winner for Defensive Player of the Year for the second consecutive year.
It actually speaks to just how elite Ahman is on the defensive side of the ball that in what is a relative down year for Sweden, he instills so much fear and respect from his opponents on offense. How he performs on defense correlates directly to how Sweden finishes a tournament. Their two gold medals, in Ostrava and the World Championships?
He led the tournament in digs in both.
2023 Best Defensive Player: Ondrej Perusic
2024 Best Defensive Player: David Ahman
