KEY POINTS:
Despite their dominant form in recent years, Kiwi men's No 1 pairing Kirk Pitman and Jason Lochhead enter this weekend's New Zealand Beach Volleyball Open in the unfamiliar position of fourth seeds.
The pair, who have made the final of the premier event on the New Zealand tour for the past four years, are aiming for their third straight NZ Open title when the tournament kicks off in Auckland today.
But to do so, they will have to overcome local rivals and top seeds Brendan Heath and Greg Lindsay-Brown, as well as a number of top international pairings.
Heath and Lindsay-Brown, who paired up for the first time this season, have been the surprise packages on the McEntee Hire NZ tour this year, winning both the Christchurch and Ohope legs and making the final in Mt Maunganui last weekend.
Their form has seen them snare the top seeding for the NZ Open.
Although they were an untried combination heading in to this season, Linsday-Brown said their success on the tour hasn't come as a complete surprise. Despite this being the first year Heath and Lindsay-Brown have played together, they are the most experienced team on the 2009 Tour, having each played more than 10 national tours.
"When we discussed it through the winter - the possibility of pairing up - we figured we'd be quite a good combination," said Lindsay-Brown. "Brendan is one of the best blockers in the country and I'm one of the best defenders so we knew instantly we could play well, it was just a matter of team dynamics and whether we could gel properly or not."
They figured correctly.
The athletic back-court play of Lindsay-Brown has proved the perfect foil for the powerful blocking and hitting skills of Heath in the front court.
Their success this year has been all the more remarkable considering the limited preparation for the tour.
The duo only came together three weeks ago and had just a handful of training sessions together before the tour got under way.
With the pair planning to join the world tour later this year, Lindsay-Brown said their strong performances on the back of a short build-up were a promising sign.
"It's exciting to know because once we put in the level of training we're kind of meant to, we'll play a lot better," said Lindsay-Brown.
While Pitman and Lochhead are gunning for their NZ Open hat-trick, women's number ones Susan Blundell and Anna Scarlett are looking to become the first Kiwi women's pair to win an NZ Open title in the nine-year history of the tournament.
The pair have finished runners-up in the previous two years, but since debuting on the FIVB World Tour last year they have improved rapidly, lifting their world ranking from around the 200 mark to 60.
Before this season Blundell and Scarlett had never won a leg on the New Zealand tour, but so far it has been a golden summer for the lofty pair, winning the McEntee Hire Tour events in Christchurch, Wellington and Mt Maunganui, and finishing runners-up in Ohope.
Blundell said their results so far in 2009 just go to show how much progress they have made in the past year.
"Improvement is always such a gradual thing, when you're sort of chipping away at something it's kind of hard for us to know. But it's when people who haven't seen you play for a long time tell you 'you girls have improved so much' it puts it in a better context, and I guess our results prove that as well," she said.
But with the pressure on for Blundell and Scarlett to break their NZ Open duck, this weekend's tournament is set to truly put their resolve to the test.
However, Blundell said while they dearly would love to win a NZ Open title, they are not placing undue pressure on themselves.
"It'd be fantastic to win it and a great finish to the season, but we just have to go in with the same approach as we do every tournament," said Blundell.
Their strongest international challenge in Auckland is likely to come from the German pairing of Oka Rau and Helke Claasen, who were the beaten finalists in both the Wellington and Mt Maunganui events. Rau is a two-time Olympian and currently ranked 14th in the world.
The American pairing of Paige Davis and Jenn Snyder were also expected to perform strongly.
Round-robin play in the New Zealand Beach Volleyball Open gets under way at 8.30am today at the ASB Tennis Centre, on Stanley St. Quarter-finals are scheduled for tomorrow and semifinals and finals are to be played on Sunday.
