MANHATTAN BEACH , Calif. -- On September 21, 1983, a special event took place for the first time on the south side of the Manhattan Beach. Twenty-five years later to the day, the tradition of that special event continued as No. 1 seed Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers defeated No. 3 seed Nick Lucena and Sean Scott to claim their fourth Manhattan Beach Open title and get their name on the pier.

"There's some illustrious company up there," said Rogers on being only the fourth team after Mike O'Hara/Mike Bright, Mike Dodd/Tim Hovland and Karch Kiraly/Kent Steffes to have three in a row Manhattan Beach titles. "If you know your history of volleyball, those are the names on the beach."

Capping off their history-making year that included a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, Dalhausser and Rogers used consistency and confidence to break through a 4-4 tie in the first set of the finals.

"I thought we played well the first game, but Phil made some good moves on blocking by blocking Sean three times in a row," said Lucena. "They got a couple of points and blew through the first game."

After breaking through that tie, Dalhausser and Rogers never looked back as they went on a 3-1 run before the first time out at 7-5 and then 7-5 run before the second time out at 14-10 that proved to be too much of a deficit to overcome.

"I tried to set Sean a little bit more at the net, but they are the No. 1 team right now and you have to play perfect against them," said Lucena. We had to play a lot of matches before we got to them and just ran out of gas."

The toughest semifinal matches of the day involved Lucena and Scott, who narrowly defeated the No. 6 seed of Matt Fuerbringer and Casey Jennings 18-21, 21-19 and 15-12 in an hour and 14 minutes.

"That was a big match, and I didn't think we were going to win that one," said Lucena. "I think in the end it definitely did take stuff out of us, but I was glad to get the win.

Set two of the final match was also controlled by Dalhausser and Rogers, who used some momentum from one of Scott's kills going off a Dalhausser block and Lucena delivering a long kill that gave the No. 1 team the go-ahead point from a 4-4 tie.

Despite this being their sixth championship match, Lucena and Scott seemed to run out of steam and hit a couple of costly hitting errors that increased the lead for the No. 1 seed in set two.

"They are really confident and don't make a lot of mistakes," said Lucena. "They are the No. 1 team right now and there is no one else out there like Phil right now. [Brad] Keenan has pretty good hands, but on transition Phil gives you such a great set and that's something we didn't take advantage of. Our transition sets were off this game."

Yet no matter how much Lucena and Scott tried to fight back against "The Thin Beast" and "The Professor," a deficit that reached to as many as six points in the second and helped give Dalhausser and Rogers their final tournament victory of the season and their 11th AVP title for the 2008. With Olympic, AVP and FIVB victories in 2008 behind them, they are now like other players on the AVP tour -- looking forward to the off season.

"I am going to do a whole lot of nothing," said Dalhausser. "Baseball playoffs are coming up and I'll get to sit down and watch them along with NASCAR."