AVP gets set for Virginia Beach tournament

The next round on the eight-stop Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) Tour is set for this weekend (July 27-29) at Virginia Beach, Va., with the United States' top men pro beach volleyball players vying for $62,500 in prize money.

The Paul Mitchell Open at Virginia Beach starts Friday (July 27) at 9 a.m. (EDT) on six sand courts at the Fourth Street Beach site, with Round five of the men's competition. Friday's qualification tournament will determine the final four berths in the 32-team Main Draws. The first 48 Main Draw matches will be played Saturday starting at 9 a.m.

Sunday's competition starts at 7:30 a.m. with the final 14 matches being played. The final matches will begin approximately at 1 p.m. Sunday.

The 2001 AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour season opened with a pair of events in Southern California last month with a combined men's and women's event in Hermosa Beach (June 8-10) and a men's tournament in Huntington Beach (June 15-17). "Official" entries for The Paul Mitchell Open at Virginia Beach will be announced Wednesday.

The men's competition will feature Brent Doble and LeGrande, who teamed the last two Sundays (July 15 in Muskegon, Mich. and July 22 in Belmar, N. J.) to win AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour titles. The two crowns give the Doble/LeGrande partnership three AVP titles the past two seasons. Doble and LeGrande will also be seeking to become the first AVP team since August 1998 to win three straight titles when Karch Kiraly and Adam Johnson won events in Milwaukee, Atlanta and Hermosa Beach, Calif.

Doble and LeGrande scored a 21-16, 23-21 upset win over Canyon Ceman and Mike Whitmarsh to win the 49-minute finale in Muskegon. Doble and LeGrande defeated Ceman and Whitmarsh in the Belmar semifinals before scoring a 21-16, 20-22, 15-9 win over Albert Hannemann and Scott in the 64-minute New Jersey title match.

Scott Ayakatubby and Eduardo Bacil, who won the Huntington Beach event when they defeated Ceman and Whitmarsh in the finals, are also expected to battle for the Virginia Beach title. Ayakatubby and Bacil placed fourth in Belmar after dropping their final match to Ceman and Whitmarsh. Ayakatubby is returning to the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour after being sidelined much of the past four seasons with injuries.

Whitmarsh, who captured the Silver Medal with Mike Dodd at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, is the AVP's reigning "King of the Beach" after winning the crown last October in Las Vegas. With his third-place Belmar finish, Whitmarsh became the seventh pro beach volleyball player to surpass the $1.5-million mark in earnings. With 27 titles and an Olympic Silver Medal finish in 1996 at Atlanta with Mike Dodd, Whitmarsh has now totalled $1,501,716 in his career.