Ready to Turn Up the Heat at Open : Volleyball: Dennie Knoop and Marla O’Hara are hopeful their talent can overcome inexperience at Hermosa Beach event.

Dennie Knoop and Marla O’Hara have become one of the most entertaining teams on the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn. tour.

“In Volleyball Monthly they called us vocal, slash, upset-minded,” Knoop said. “I think we’re a very exciting team.”

Pat Zartman, who helps to train some of the WPVA’s top players, says Knoop and O’Hara have potential to become one of the tour’s most formidable teams.

“They’re learning to play stronger mentally,” Zartman said. “They’re working on being more consistent because they have been one of the more physical teams on the tour.”

Even at practice, Knoop, who lives in Redondo Beach, and O’Hara, a South Bay native, attract a crowd. Bicyclists and joggers on the boardwalk in Redondo Beach this week stopped to watch the WPVA’s 10th-ranked team train.

During a digging drill, O’Hara yelled while diving for balls. Knoop laughed when it was her turn.

“They’re just intense players,” said LeValley Pattison, who competed on the pro beach tour for five years before becoming WPVA tour director this season. “They’re also a good, solid blocking and hitting team.

“They don’t convert as many rallies and I think that’s what separates them from the top teams. They’re two of the quickest athletes on the tour. Physically, they’re superior than a lot of people.”

Knoop and O’Hara have placed in the top nine in seven of eight tournaments this year. They finished fifth at Phoenix and Fresno and won the $10,000 Manhattan Beach Open two weeks ago by defeating Marie Andersson Alison Johnson in the final.

The victory was somewhat of a consolation for Knoop and O’Hara, who failed to qualify for that week’s top event, the $50,000 Shootout in Las Vegas. Only the top eight teams qualified for that event and Knoop-O’Hara were ranked ninth when the selections were made.

“With the disappointment of not being in the top eight at Vegas and feeling the adversity of that, we still came through a tough pool for the win,” Knoop said. “A win is a win, even if the top eight teams weren’t there.”

On Saturday, Knoop and O’Hara will compete against the tour’s best players in the 32-team Hermosa Beach Open.

A round-robin four-woman event at 12:30 this afternoon opens the tournament on the courts next to the Hermosa Beach Pier. Regular two-woman play begins on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. and the final is scheduled for Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Unlike most of the WPVA’s top players, Knoop and O’Hara were not college standouts, did not compete on the U.S. National team or in any professional indoor league.

“Neither one of us have any sophisticated credentials,” Knoop said. “It’s not as if we were NCAA All-Americans or anything. We’re raw athletes from different venues of sports.”

Knoop, 36, didn’t even play organized volleyball in school. She played basketball at Division III North Central College in Illinois. She did postgraduate work at the University of Valencia in Spain and started playing indoor club volleyball.

In the early 1980s, Knoop accepted an international marketing job in Miami. On weekends, she played recreational beach volleyball. In later years, as her interest grew, she joined an East Coast beach volleyball circuit.

In 1990, after her first full season on the WPVA tour, Knoop moved to Redondo Beach so she could regularly compete against the sport’s best players.

“I played sporadically in the WPVA in 1988 and my first full season was in 1989,” Knoop said. “In 1990, I played with Mary Jo Peppler and we placed in the top 10. I was so excited that I did so well, I thought, ‘God, if I could live there and train against the best . . .’ So I packed my van and moved cross-country.”

In 1991, Knoop had a 40-32 record with five partners. She teamed up with O’Hara toward the end of the season and their best finish was fourth at Myrtle Beach, S.C.

“Dennie is a great blocker and she can jump,” Pattison said.

O’Hara, 31, competed in three sports at Hawthorne High. She was a teammate of Pattison’s on El Camino’s 1983 state championship volleyball team and went on to play at Cal State Dominguez Hills and Cal State Los Angeles.

In 1988, her first year on the WPVA tour, she teamed with Andersson, another former El Camino teammate. Their best finish was ninth at Zuma Beach.

O’Hara was named the WPVA’s most-improved player in 1991. Her best finish was third in Santa Cruz with Deb Richardson.

“Marla is just a strong person,” Knoop said. “She’s powerful, very fast, agile and flexible. When you put that together with the fact that she’s more technically sound and experienced, you have a better player.”

Pattison, who teamed briefly with O’Hara last year, says other players have noticed O’Hara’s improvement.

“Before she didn’t have much ball control, but she has gained a lot of ball control,” said Pattison, who coaches the El Camino women’s volleyball team. “She’s also stronger and she brings a lot of intensity to the game.”

O’Hara and Knoop acknowledge they must work on their skills before they can become one of the tour’s top teams.

“There’s 32 teams in a tournament and only one goes home happy, only one wins,” Knoop said. “The rest are upset. To be able to lift yourself back up on Monday and set new goals and keep going is tough.”

Attracting a crowd, however, is always easy for two of pro beach volleyball’s most intense players.