The AVP tour is making its long-awaited return to Hermosa Beach, CA, this week for its sixth event of the season. The Hermosa Beach Open, which runs from Thursday, July 20, to Sunday, July 23, marks the second time this year the domestic professional beach volleyball tour has stopped in Southern California but the first time since 2010 the AVP has been to Hermosa Beach.

In 2010, April Ross and Jen Kessy won the women's title, and Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers won the men's. With Kessy and Rogers retired and Ross and Dalhausser in Poland for an FIVB tournament, we're guaranteed to crown a new champion of Hermosa Beach come Sunday. But that's only the start of the many great storylines to follow this week. Here are some more...

Once again, many of the tour's top players are overseas competing in FIVB events, leaving the title hunt in Hermosa wide open.

Missing from the women's main draw are April Ross/Lauren Fendrick, Kelly Claes/Sara Hughes, and Brooke Sweat/Summer Ross, who are in Poland for the Olsztyn Four Star. Kelly Larsen/Betsi Flint and Amanda Dowdy/Irene Pollock are in Ulsan, South Korea, for a one-star event.

Kim Dicello/Emily Stockman will compete in a country quota match in Olsztyn, and, depending on their performance there, may or may not return to California to claim their No. 2 seed in the AVP Hermosa Beach main draw.

Taking all of those absences into account, the only women's competitors in Hermosa who have won an AVP title this year are Emily Day and Brittany Hochevar, who won the season-opening Huntington Beach Open. The No. 1-seeded pair will face the toughest challenge from DiCello and Stockman, if they make it back from Poland in time, and Jen Fopma and Kelly Reeves are hungry to make it to the title match after finishing third in the last two events.

On the men's side, Casey Patterson/Theo Brunner, Phil Dalhausser/Nick Lucena, and Ryan Doherty/John Hyden all made the journey to Poland, making room for some qualifier teams to move up into the main draw.

Billy Allen and Stafford Slick, who have made it to the championship match in the last three AVP tournaments and won the Seattle Open, will be favorites in Hermosa, depending on the condition of Slick's abdomen, which he strained during the San Francisco event.

New York champions Taylor Crabb/Jake Gibb and San Francisco title-winners Maddison McKibbin/Ty Loomis are the only other pair in the Hermosa Beach draw that have won an event this season.

An expanded main draw and a MASSIVE qualifier.

The AVP has expanded the main draw to include 24 teams in Hermosa Beach, 16 of which earned automatic qualification through their tour points and eight of which will earn their spots through the qualifier bracket.

Click here to see the AVP Hermosa Beach entry list.

Southern California stops on the domestic beach volleyball tour typically draw large qualifier fields, and the 2017 Hermosa Beach Open is certainly no exception. With 103 men's qualifier teams and 84 women's, this is by far the largest qualifier of the season so far and perhaps the largest since current owner Donald Sun revived the tour in 2013.

Sibs venture out on their own.

There are a number of iconic sibling pairs on the AVP tour. The Lindquists, Van Zwietens, Bomgrens, McKibbins... But this weekend in Hermosa Beach, we'll see a few of those sibs venture out on their own.

Tim Bomgren, the younger of the Bomgren bros, is playing an AVP event without his brother, Brian, for the first time ever. For the Hermosa Beach Open, Tim is paired up with Curt Toppel, a 6-foot-9, 36-year-old blocker, and the duo is seeded ninth in the main draw.

Steve Van Zwieten, the middle brother in the Van Zwieten trio and husband of women's main draw regular Kendra Van Zwieten, typically plays with younger bro Mark, but for Hermosa, he's picked up Sterling Perkins, a 23-year-old who will be playing in his sixth AVP event.

Maddison McKibbin has been playing without his brother and teammate Riley since mid-May when Riley injured his hand. In his last outing, Maddison won his first AVP title at AVP San Francisco Open with Ty Loomis, and the pair is making another go at it in Hermosa Beach.

One sibs pair you will see together is the Lindquist sisters, aka Katie Jameson and Tracy Jones, who are back for their second tournament of the season after qualifying for the main draw in Huntington Beach. This duo of extraordinary defensive players stunned Canadian Olympian Sarah Pavan in the Huntington Beach qualifier and will be looking to shake things up again in Hermosa.

Speaking of siblings…

You might recognize one of the names in the women's qualifier list: Carlee Roethlisberger. Yes, as in the younger sister of Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Carlee played four years of basketball at Oklahoma and then joined the Sooners volleyball team in her fifth year, earning a starting spot as a middle blocker and being named the Big 12 Newcomer of the Year.

In 2016, Carlee joined the beach volleyball team at Irvine Valley College, where she competed at the No. 2 spot for the team that finished runner-up at the California Community College Athletics Association Women's Beach Volleyball State Championship.