The world’s top beach volleyball players will serve up their skills to New Yorkers this weekend on the beaches of Coney Island at the 2007 AVP Brooklyn Open.

The tournament is taking place in Brooklyn for the second consecutive year, and organizers say building a fan base in the city will be key in driving the popularity of beach volleyball.

“We’re the fastest growing sport in the country,” the Bensonhurst-born commissioner of the AVP Crocs Pro Beach Volleyball Tour, Leonard Armato, said in a phone interview. “You want to be in New York, because if you can’t make it in New York, you can’t call yourself big time.”

Yesterday, at the tournament qualifier, where amateurs seeking to play in the weekend event as wild cards battled it out, the hopes of last year’s hometown heroes were dashed in the final match.

Timothy McNichol of Brooklyn and Ihor Akinshyn of New Jersey, who a year ago qualified for the main event and eventually lost a thriller against two of the world’s best players, just missed their bid to play against the professionals in a close match.

“We weren’t quite on our games today,” Mr. McNichol, who works as a waiter at Carmine’s restaurant on the Upper West Side, said. “It was a tougher-sized matchup for us.”

Messrs. McNichol and Akinshyn were one of the 74 men’s and women’s amateur teams competing to make the final. Many of the amateur players travel with the tour and pay $50 to compete in each qualifying event.

Keegan Featherstone of Manhattan Beach, Calif., took a bus to the city from Rhode Island with her partner, Ashley Groothuis, after competing at a tournament last week in Boston. “You really have to love the game,” Ms. Featherstone, who is staying with several other players at a hotel in the Jamaica section of Queens, said.