Seal Beach Will Host Top Pros for $100,000 Open

The top professional beach volleyball players will be at Seal Beach pier this weekend for the $100,000 Seal Beach Open, one of the richest events on this year’s tour.

The winningest team on this year’s tour, Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, and the team that has earned the most prize money, Mike Dodd and Tim Hovland, will lead the pack as the two-day tournament begins at 9 a.m. Saturday, with the final rounds beginning at 8 a.m. Sunday.

But for those who agree with volleyball promoter Craig Elledge, who maintains that the two-man game can get a little tedious, there is another option available Saturday. There will be an exhibition of Elledge’s new American Beach Volleyball League, which uses a four-man format.

The exhibition will run simultaneously with the Legends tournament at the Hermosa Beach pier. There will be $12,500 in prize money divided among the four teams that will participate.

“We’re trying to show that four people on the beach are better than two,” said Elledge, who promotes several events for the women’s pro tour.

The four-man format--a compromise between the traditional two-man beach game and the six-man indoor game--is not new. But Elledge says this is the first attempt to determine whether it can succeed as a pro sport.

“This game really moves,” Elledge said. “There are more rallies. There’s more strategy involved. It sounds like a great theory, so now we want to see if it will work.”

Elledge said he selected four prominent players as team captains for the exhibition and allowed them to fill out their teams. The captains are Craig Buck, a two-time Olympic gold medalist; Andy Fishburn, who twice won the World Championship of beach volleyball; David Rottman, a member of the U.S. national team, and Bill Stetson, who set for a national championship team at USC.