This week's sports event brings together those competitors who qualified during the eight-city grassroots-based Corona Wide Open tour, with men's and women's open beach volleyball division players competing for a share of a $5,000 pot (paying first- through fourth-place finishers).

Play begins at 9 a.m. each day and concludes at sundown. All open beach volleyball division finals will be played on Sunday, with all other division sports finals on Saturday. "Grassroots beach volleyball and the conservation of the true beach volleyball lifestyle are extremely important to me," said co-founder Karch Kiraly, a three-time Olympic gold medalist. "This kind of reminds me of beach volleyball's heyday in the '80s. I was fortunate enough to play it, to live it and to see the sport develop into a national phenomenon.

The friendship and the competition that brought this sport to life on the beaches of California seem to have a second coming." The sports event is open to all players 16 years of age and older. Beach volleyball participants do not have to have played in a qualifying tournament, and on-line registration for all non-open beach volleyball divisions (www.usopenbeachvolleyball.com) will be welcomed until 8 p.m. today. Mike Morrison and Aaron Wachtfogel defeated Evan Engle and Manhattan Beach's Jon Mesko to win the 2008 men's beach volleyball open title in Santa Barbara.