What do Kade Manson, Rio Waida, Cole Houshmand and Jake Marshall have in common?
At dawn I sat to re-watch some of what I’d missed. Heats were still running, but I felt I needed to see what had come before.
Chest high Winkipop. At first smooth and clean, later fat and ruffled as tide and wind pushed in.
Surfers traded in sixes, sevens, six-point-fives, seven-point-ones. All looked the same. There were no tens, nor nines. The eights awarded were figments, in my eyes.
Joe Turpel was talking, talking, talking.
By way of contrast, the Victorian sandstone cliffs glowed deep oranges and reds in the morning sun. Beautiful, I thought. A fine morning for a quiet surf.
Somehow the bash bash bash of pro surfers in this setting was an affront.
On my side of the world the sun also shone. Outside my window a blackbird eyed me from the top of the fence, orange-gold beak tilted curiously. There were questions in its beady eyes. Valid ones.
I looked back with spite and envy. What a life, I mused. What a simple life, free of vice and folly.
Then I went back to watching pro surfers on the opposite side of the planet in a place I’ve never been bash bash frantically bash soft lips, trying to eke points from pointlessness.
What a queer collection of quarter finalists we’ve ended up with as a result.
We’ve arrived here in unspectacular fashion and by way of some odd scoring. Perhaps not “the worst judging I’ve ever seen”, as Gabriel Medina asserted, but poor nonetheless.
Ramzi Boukhiam has cause for complaint. On evidence of the day, the 6.80 he received for his final wave could easily have been a point higher and should have turned the heat.
The benefactor was Liam O’Brien, who ironically should have his own judging consternations this evening.
His round of 16 bout with Ewing was one of the most entertaining of the day, but was cooked from the off by an 8.50 thrown at Ethan Ewing for a three turn opening wave that was certainly good, but absolutely not a point better than everything else.
As is so often the case with Ewing, judges go giddy the moment he hits the water. And although the scoring thereafter was reasonable, the match had been spoiled.
O’Brien, for his part, showed impressive variety in his turns. He’s a surfer for whom I have a growing admiration in terms of style and approach. He’d have won many other match-ups today, and should win many in the future.
The most controversial judging decision saw rookie Cole Houshmand take a last second victory over Gabriel Medina, and the controversy is mostly because Medina was so vocal in addressing it. So rare is the post heat losers interview, I felt sure it was Medina who instigated it.
Post heat, Laura Enever begin by suggesting it was a mistake to give Houshmand the wave without priority. “I did the mistake?”, Medina bristled. “This is funny.”
He did not hold back.
“It’s the worst judging I’ve ever seen. It’s bad for the sport. We pretend that it’s not happening. It’s happening. It’s sad. We need to talk about it. Hopefully they listen to us.”
It was unclear if he had seen Houshmand’s wave at this point, or if his criticism was purely based on the fact he felt the wave was too small to offer that sort of scoring potential. Either way, for once I’m not sure I agree with him.
Scores flatten in poor waves, scales become opaque. You’ll have noticed that there are few controversies over scoring when the waves are good, no complaints from surfers or fans. Partly this is due to the gulf that becomes apparent between guys like Medina and Florence and all the rest, and partly it’s because we’re all just enjoying ourselves a lot more. Simple, really.
John Florence lost to Kade Matson today. It was the way John normally loses, more or less the only way he can lose: when the waves are sub-standard.
He held the highest number of the heat with a 7.67 and needed only a four-something to take the heat from Matson, who caught only two waves in total. But his final effort was tragic, a fat wave he barely scraped into. The tragedy belonged to the moment, not the man.
I love the history of Bells, I do. I love the prestige, how much it means to Australian surfers. But I did find myself asking today if this really was the best we can do for the best surfers in the world? For them and for us.
The WSL remains structured around profit margins (or at least minimising losses). Behind the edifice that purports to be about entertaining fans and serving athletes, they see and serve only themselves. They treat surf competitions as business, not entertainment.
Until they recognise the dire need to serve surfers above spreadsheets, interest in their product will continue to be frittered away on days where many of us wouldn’t bother to surf ourselves, let alone watch someone else do it.
Maybe improving the Tour means strike missions with a scaled down production, including the field itself. But we’ve had a season and a half now where among the thousands of hours we’ve watched this (or turned it off in disgust) you can count the hours of good waves on one hand.
The Colapinto brothers know this. The heat of their childhood dreams and squabbles played out today with few opportunities. Crosby sat sullen in the unbreaking lumps of the high tide, managing only a 4.67 total in three attempts.
Elder brother Griffin was busier but mostly manufactured the scores he got to take the victory. There was one bendy layback, Marzo-esque, that gave him a 7.17, but the heat was slow and ruffled with the onshore breeze.
It was so lacking in opportunity that Crosby said it had left a bad taste in his mouth.
“We’d hyped it up too much”, said Griffin, wisely. “Keep on an even keel always.”
Perhaps this approach is the only way you can survive as a pro surfer. Just accept what’s in front of you. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is.
And it was with this mindset that I looked on at Kaipo Guererro, in hard hat and high-vis vest, up his Bailey ladder.
Grinning from ear to ear, he was a vision of the purest happiness.
I could only smile in response.
Fair play, I thought. Fair play.
