Ruru ready to learn from world's best

Rotorua's Melissa Ruru is relishing the chance to take on world-class competition at this weekend's New Zealand Open beach volleyball tournament at Mount Maunganui.

Ruru and her playing partner Lydia McCormack (North Harbour) are New Zealand's number one team and have started 2012 well, winning the nationals and the first stage of the international tour at Karapiro last month. But with this year's Open boasting the strongest international field in the event's history, Ruru knows a tournament victory is unlikely.

Despite this, she said playing top combinations such as Dutch pair Sanne Keizer and Marleen Van Iersel (ranked 7th in world) and ninth-ranked Germans Sara Goller and Laura Ludwig would be a great experience.

"You definitely lift your game when you play against them. You know you are not going to win but you just go hard for every point."

Ruru said she and McCormack are still fine-tuning their combination after only teaming up in October. After 10 years playing with Debbie Hill, getting used to a new partner has taken time.

"I was back court [with Hill] and now I am playing front court with a new partner. I am learning heaps about positional play and just learning to adapt to someone new - their personality and way they play," she said.

"We just really clicked in January - winning nationals and Karapiro."

Ruru said a tough training schedule was paying off.

"I travel around an hour to Hamilton, Karapiro or Mount Maunganui most days, meet Lydia, train for two hours then drive home," she said. It's then straight to work for Ruru, a police officer.

"The Rotorua police are great, they give me time off to train and compete and are really supportive," she said.

The Eagle Retreat-sponsored pair set themselves three goals when they got together - to win the nationals, represent New Zealand at the Oceania Zone Olympic qualifiers and make it to the Asia Olympic qualifiers. They have achieved the first and will be back at Mount Maunganui beach next Thursday for the Oceania qualifiers. A top three finish there would get them to China in June for their shot at Olympic qualification.

The two Vanuatu teams in the Oceania Olympic qualifiers will also compete at the Open and Ruru said she was hoping for the chance to play them this weekend. Other than that, the goals for the tournament are pretty simple.

"We just want to play our game and have fun - that's when we win games," she said.

In the men's draw, Kiwi hopes Jason Lochhead, Kirk Pitman, Sam O'Dea and Ben O'Dea have so far used the tour to experiment with partnerships. Pitman and Ben O'Dea combined to win the Hamilton tour event last week but have kept this weekend's pairings under wraps.

International contenders for the mens title include 2009 world champions Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann (Germany), who won at Karapiro.

Qualification takes place from 1pm-5pm today andpool play gets underway at 9am tomorrow. The final eight teams will play off on Sunday. A 500 seat grandstand has been erected on the main beach, free for the public.