Taylor Crabb did nothing wrong.

That is perhaps the defining element that, among many, stands out the most of an unusually large percentage of Anders Mol victims: They do nothing wrong.

They make the correct swing, given the information that they had prior to it, information that Mol and, behind him, Christian Sorum, feed them. This, of course, is nothing new in beach volleyball, or in sport in general. Blockers and defenders disguise their defensive schemes, no different than football coaches mixing coverages and blitzes, baseball teams shifting based on the batter’s tendencies, boxers altering their styles to adjust for their opponent.

The difference, in the case of Mol and Sorum, is that no single blocker has been capable of making the moves Mol makes with alarming regularity. Nobody has ever baited multiple feet worth of line or angle and then – surprise! – it’s gone, and Mol hasn’t even moved his feet. Even in the 2000s and early 2010s, arguably the most blocker-rich era in the sport’s history, with Ricardo Santos, Alison Cerutti, and Phil Dalhausser all in their respective primes, or close to it, hitters saw nothing the likes of what Mol presents on a weekly basis. This unsolvable defensive riddle is the central reason the Norwegians have been on a run of not necessarily unprecedented dominance these past six years, but certainly a stretch that puts them, still in their mid-20s, as one of the greatest teams of all-time.

With all due respect to Sorum, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, it all begins with Anders Mol.

Hands like Phil

It was startling, the effusive praise being issued by John Mayer in 2018. A man of few words and hard-earned compliments, Mayer and Trevor Crabb had been swept by a pair of young Norwegians few, at the time, had heard of: a couple kids named Anders Mol and Christian Sorum who were seeded No. 18 in the Huntington Beach Four Star.

“His hand work is like Phil’s,” Mayer said, referencing, of course, Phil Dalhausser, who sits, without argument, on the Mount Rushmore of blockers.

This was startling because, well, who was Anders Mol? He and Sorum, rookies both, had taken a few fifths. They’d pushed a handful of elite teams to three sets. Upset Alison and Bruno and Latvians Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins at a four-star in Xiamen, China. But that was the length of their resume. Little suggested, at the time, that, in a few short years, Mol would make a firm case as the most dynamic blocker who’d ever lived.

This is why, when John Mayer issues a compliment, it’s best to listen.

But what is it, really, about Mol that makes him such a unique, unprecedented force at the net? The type of which the sport had never seen, even after experiencing The Wall in Santos, The Thin Beast in Dalhausser, The Mammoth in Alison? Those three, excellent as they were – are, in the cases of Dalhausser and Alison – were, well, basic. They blocked straight up and down, and they were remarkably effective at it. They were brilliant tacticians, calling the right plays at the right time, making reads mid-play and audibling on their own.

Mol displayed an ability to do all of those things and more.

His lineups were different, leveraging enormous swaths of line and then, quick as a hiccup, throw his hands completely horizontal, while still maintaining a press over the net, and seal what, two-tenths of a second earlier, had been wide open.

Which is why, technically speaking, Taylor Crabb did nothing wrong in the swing you’ll see above, in the bronze medal match at the 2019 World Tour Finals. Crabb has some of the finest vision of any beach volleyball player on the planet, equipped with a preternatural ability to feel space and movement out of his peripherals. What he saw and felt – a massive amount of line – was absolutely correct. His swing, against any blocker not named Anders Mol, was absolutely correct, and would have gone for a kill against any of them.

The problem, in this case, was that Anders Mol was the blocker at the net, and that swing, against Anders Mol, simply won’t work.

It is, in fact, exactly what Mol wants you to hit.

Five years later, hitters still haven’t adjusted.

At the end of the 2024 season, Mol, for the fourth consecutive season in which the awards were given, was voted by his peers as the best blocker in the world. For the third time, he and Sorum won a gold medal at the Beach Pro Tour Finals. They have won everything there is to win, blocked everything there is to be blocked.

Even – no, especially – the swings in which the hitter did nothing wrong.