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Miami-born Gaston Macau followed the basketball career of Rony Seikaly even before he was the Miami Heat's first draft pick in 1988.

Seikaly came to Syracuse with no organized basketball experience and left as an All-American. The first-round pick and 1990 NBA Most Improved Player Award winner played with the Heat, Golden State, Orlando and New Jersey Nets.

He was traded by the Heat in November 1994.

"I grew up watching him play basketball and always looked up to him," Macau said.

Macau, one of the state's best beach volleyball players, will literally be looking up to him Friday at Bicentennial Park.

The two are playing together in the qualifier for this weekend's AVP Cuervo Gold Crown Miami Open, the season opener for the pro beach volleyball tour. They are seeded 20th among a field of 50 men's teams featuring several players from Broward and Palm Beach counties. Other top locals trying to qualify are brothers David and Mike DiPierro of Pompano Beach, playing with different partners from California, and Jimmy, Steve and Mark Van Zwieten, also from Pompano Beach and former full-time AVP player Eric Wurts of Fort Lauderdale.

The top four men's and women's teams make it out of the qualifier for Saturday's main draw.

Macau, 32, a former Rutgers standout is a 6-foot-1 scrappy defensive player with a great jump serve. Seikaly, 41, is 6-11 1/2 and is a formidable blocker and intimidating at the net.

Still, the two have yet to play a game together. Seikaly has been training on his own. Macau, a regular at local tournaments in South Florida and AVP qualifier several times in past seasons, said he is in the best shape he has been in three years.

"Can you believe it?" Macau said. "To be able to play with a star that I looked up to as a kid is an opportunity I know I will never have again. I am very excited.

"I am looking to have fun but at the same time I like to compete. Once I get over the whole thing of meeting him and having fun, I want to win."

Seikaly is the tallest player Macau has partnered with.

"By far the tallest ... by about five inches," Macau said. "He is 6-11, it can't be all that bad. I'm just going to try and stay on the court with him.

"I kind of wished I had known a little earlier we were going to be playing together and had set some time aside to practice together. He's been busy with work and didn't have the opportunity. I think we make a pretty good team. I think we can do well."

It is the first of 18 stops on the AVP Crocs Tour that features nine new cities, including Miami and Tampa. After four years, the Fort Lauderdale event was moved to Miami. Truckloads of sand have been brought in to construct eight courts on the grassy park surface.

The Cuervo Gold Crown Series is a competition within a competition. Miami is the first of three AVP events in the series. The others are Arlington, Texas, and Huntington Beach, Calif. Teams are awarded points based on their finishes. The winners receive $100,000 in bonus money.

The area's only full-time AVP players, George Roumain and Nick Lucena, are in the main draw.

Roumain, an Olympian and 2004 AVP Rookie of the Year, played high school at St. Thomas Aquinas and Douglas and grew up in Parkland. Lucena grew up in Davie and played at Western and Florida State. Both live in California, the nation's hotbed for beach volleyball.

The top women's seed is Misty-May Treanor, who splits her time between Coral Springs and California, and Kerri Walsh, the winningest women's team in the sport.