KEY POINTS:
The 2009 New Zealand beach volleyball tour opens this weekend on Christchurch's Sumner Beach, with Kirk Pitman and Jason Lochhead looking to show home crowds the form that took them to a world tour semifinal for the first time last year.
The Tauranga-based combination recorded the best-ever finish by a New Zealand team on the world tour, in Austria in early August. Their fourth placing at this tournament bettered the fifth achieved by Glenn and Reid Hamilton in Miami in 1994, and the seventh achieved by Craig Seuseu and Tom Eade in Moscow in 1998.
They went one place better in the next event, the Otera Open in Norway, with a third placing. Despite missing the last five events on the 2008 world tour, Pitman and Lochhead finished the season ranked 21st in the world.
Their biggest challenge on the 2009 NZ tour is likely to come from fellow rising stars of world beach volleyball - Andy and Kevin Ces from France.
The French brothers had an outstanding year on the 2008 world tour with seven top 10 placings, including a second place in Bahrain in November. They are ranked 13th in the world.
The tall Dutch pairing of Timko Lokerse and Bart Bolsterlee return to New Zealand, after making one final last season.
The international men's field also includes teams from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
Heading the New Zealand hopes in the women's field are Anna Scarlett and Susan Blundell, who embark on their third season together on the NZ tour after making their debut on the world tour in 2008.
They made huge improvements throughout the 2008 world tour, lifting their world ranking to 60, and recording a 13th placing in the Norway leg of the tour. They are now seeking their first win together on the NZ tour, after making three finals last season.
Scarlett and Blundell face a strong cast of international teams headed by the German duo Okka Rau and Helke Classen, and the Australian team of Tamsin Barnett and Becchara Palmer.
Rau is ranked 14th in the world. She won the Marseille leg of the world tour in 2008, and plays the NZ tour with hard-hitting front court specialist Classen who won the NZ Open in 2004.
Barnett was fifth at the Beijing Olympics with Natalie Cook. She has now teamed up with 20-year-old Palmer, who won the world under-19 Championship in 2006.
This weekend's competition is followed by events in Wellington, Ohope and Mt Maunganui before the NZ Open in Auckland from January 23-25.
- NZPA
