Real Talk: Power Rankings Pre-Snapper!

What sort of season opener would it be without the cruel honesty of a pre-event critique?

Is it really only a week until the 2016 WCT season starts? Until the dance of the best surfers in the world rouse our dormant senses? But what is a season opener without a little real talk? Here, the writer Steve Shearer aka Longtom, swarms over the top 13.

Tomorrow, he delivers The Rookies. Let’s begin.

 1. Adriano De Souza.

Rating: World Champ

First principle for understanding Adriano De Souza: the ability to absorb, transmute, spiritualise and finally, alchemize the negative into the positive. To draw strength from it and return it to the world with interest.

All that internet hate? Ammunition. Kelly’s post-world title wavepool gazumping? Ammunition. All the thousand-fold subtle manifestations of racism and disrespect sent his way over the years. Pure ammo baby.

Would he, could he narrow the stance a few pleasing inches, loosen the hips and buttocks and showboat the title D? If the latest clip from Snapper is any guide probably not and why would he, he cracked the code and made Kelly his putinha*  along the way. All the perfect man-made waves in the world can’t take that away from him.

He never bothered to beautify his talent, instead figuring out and perfecting a simple and brutally efficient way of winning which exploits a psychological truth.  Namely, hit the first and last turns at 80%, with zero risk of falling. The serial position effect states that in any series the tendency is to remember the first and the last. Hence when Adriano hits the first turn hard and plants the last in a coffin, nails the lid shut and buries the fucker six feet under, judges, with no wandering corpses of half finished rides haunting their memory banks, automatically write a number beginning with eight. Two eights every heat, 16 total, will win just about everything. And it did.

My favourite moment from the Title last year was when, a month before Pipeline, he admitted that he wasn’t enjoying the pressure and finding it a real struggle. Grim little soviet demi-god! And then showed up at the Pipeline and wiped the floor with them.

Would he, could he narrow the stance a few pleasing inches, loosen the hips and buttocks and showboat the title D? If the latest clip from Snapper is any guide probably not and why would he, he cracked the code and made Kelly his putinha*  along the way. All the perfect man-made waves in the world can’t take that away from him.

*Little bitch.

2.Filipe Toledo

Rating: Four

It might sound counter-intuitive after the year that was, but could the Brazilian storm have peaked a little, or at least be going into a period of relative calm and quietude? They won everything, it’s hard to see any real competition for them. Like Genghis Khan after conquering the Russian steppe they might feel like echoing the sentiment of his words: “ I return once more to tranquility, I return to purity”.

Waging surfing warfare is tiring. Could we really begrudge them a little profit taking, an enjoying of the spoils, what romantic french poet Arthur Rimbaud called “the feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed”.

If so and you’ll grant me that surfing wonderfully well is nothing but sublimated sex, a fundamentally libidinous dance for the pure of instinct then our fabulous Filipe might lose some of his pop and zesty electricity. Become more like Taj and Wilko. All tip and no iceberg, if you get my drift.

Who among us could court hostility to that kind of sensuality? If you occupied the shoes of our latin studs wouldn’t you sip from the cup,  take a moment out to enjoy it all: the wine,the women, youth and allow the competition to catch up?

If so and you’ll grant me that surfing wonderfully well is nothing but sublimated sex, a fundamentally libidinous dance for the pure of instinct then our fabulous Filipe might lose some of his pop and zesty electricity. Become more like Taj and Wilko. All tip and no iceberg, if you get my drift.

We’ll see, but if this unlikely event happens and Filipe comes out at Snapper looking sluggish and spent, you read it here first. Surfing as erotic contest. Could there be a reality more Gold Coast, more suited to our beloved Brazilians!

3. Gabriel Medina.

Rating: Three

Let us not forget Gabby was the best surfer in the world last year, in the same way that Kelly Slater was the best surfer in the world the year that Joel Parkinson won his Title and even the following year when Fanning won.

We never thought that would be challenged did we? But Gabby is young enough and smart enough. He ended up one heat away from the Title. Who could have foreseen the black swan moment of the Glen Hall debacle? The “lost heat” at the Box. That won’t happen again.

There’s no cause for alarm or violent reaction in that simple observation. Everything about Gabby’s year- from the volume in the boards (which allowed the power of those tree trunk legs to be applied-buckets thrown skywards!) , the clutch tuberiding, the progression, the insouciant aerials ready to be thrown whenever needed. It all added up to a deserved title defence and a run at the Slater 11.

We never thought that would be challenged did we? But Gabby is young enough and smart enough. He ended up one heat away from the Title. Who could have foreseen the black swan moment of the Glen Hall debacle? The “lost heat” at the Box. That won’t happen again.

Four wins this year, easy Title Number Two.

4. Mick Fanning

Rating: Runner-up

Whats that thing tapping, on Michael Fannings chamber door? The Black Raven of Death? According to our favourite german Freddy Nietszsche it is danger which teaches us to know our resources, our shield and spear, our spirit, which compels us to be strong. White Lightning will take a year off to reset and hop on the sled but what happens if he takes a sharp blade to Snapper and carves it open from arsehole to breakfast, wins and then carries on at Bells?

Still a lot of gorgeous if’s to be answered in the case of Michael Fanning.

I’m just a regular recreational surfer without a nationalist bone in his body so the deification of Fanning as a mainstream Aussie celebrity is a phenomena beyond my ken. But out of all the formidable weapons life has arraigned against Fanning: from being traduced by Chas Smith, to the ripping of the hamstring off the bone, to the shark attack, to the death of the brothers. The most dangerous may be a recreational surfer that Fanning burns at the Superbank looking for revenge. Thus quoth the raven.

5. Julian Wilson

Rating: Six

How confounding and confusing pro surfing must be for the most handsome man on tour. He surfed the best he’s ever surfed, got knocked out repeatedly and almost failed to qualify in 2014. Won Pipe to finish the year,  developed safety surfing to make heats only to be as a effective as a wax statue in the final as guys surfing to their full potential humiliated him.

It was like he was there, but he wasn’t there. Is that the curse of great beauty? As songwriter Clem Snide put it:

“Cause those paper cuts kept you from writing 

A poem so epic and true 

About how you are cursed with a beauty so great 

I’m sure that it’s hard being you “

It was easier two or three years ago seeing J-Dub turn his talents, the best bottom-turn-to-top-turn combo in the game, aerials, flawless technique, courage, into world titles. Now it seems some fundamental flaw might have derailed what seemed destined and the rise of the Brazilians has closed the door on anything but a consolation title some time in the future.

6. Italo Ferreira 

Rating: Seven

Easily the heat of the year, from a performance perspective and for title implications, was between Italo and Gabby Medina in the quarter-finals of the Portugal comp. Gabby was on fire, Gabby was steaming to an improbable world title defence, Gabby had just won France. An apex predator in full control of his environment to speak metaphorically and literally.

In the first 15 minutes he had Italo comboed. Never seen a man look more destined to win a heat and head to the finals. Sixteen minutes in, Italo stabs a hollow left in the throat. Five minutes later, hucks a tail-high full-rote backside air and reverses the combo. He just throws it back at Gabby like he was kicking him back a soccer ball on a dusty street, like a couple of kids playing around.

The heat ended with Italo maintaining the combo, Gabby tapping out. Here I have an image of Gabby frozen in my brain. In the post-heat presser, open-mouthed, stammering with that Arnie Schwarzenegger english, trying to process what had just happened but failing utterly. He did it to Kelly too. Twice. World Title possibility? Definitely.

7. John John Florence

Rating: Fifteen

Surf intelligence. There, I’ve put those two words together in the same sentence.

But it is a thing, a real phenomena, right?

We all recognise it when we see it: the guy or gal always in the right spot, catching the best waves, making the heavy look relaxing, easy. Surf intelligence exists but it tends to be a vicious, tyrannical weed of a mental faculty.

Problem is, being a pro surfer who does comps requires some basic skills in cognition. Like the ability to understand that a ten and a three will be beaten by two sevens. You could invent, and I would very much like to see it, a format where Florence would be World Champ for life.

Like any tinpot dictator it crowds out, smothers and ruthlessly exterminates it’s opposition, in this case any other form of intelligence. Surfing your brains out has more than the ring of truth to it.

Problem is, being a pro surfer who does comps requires some basic skills in cognition. Like the ability to understand that a ten and a three will be beaten by two sevens. You could invent, and I would very much like to see it, a format where Florence would be World Champ for life.

We saw what it would look like during the Eddie. Nothing to worry about except surf for an hour, no calculations required except those demanded by pure surf intelligence. Until that happens Florence is a prisoner to the vicissitudes of the ocean in a way that smarter competitors are not.

8. Kelly Slater

Rating: Nine

Photo: Morgan Maassen

Leaving aside the twin objections that “athlete” is a dubious epithet whenapplied to surfers and surfing as “sport” is a concept mocked by the fact that only a minuscule percentage of surfers ever participate in competition, you have to acknowledge Slater as one of the most greatest sportspeople of any era.

Across time and space he’s been dominant like few others. Given that, can we find any useful analog sporting heroes which might help up make sense of this long tail of Slater’s career. Rory Parker called baseball’s Dead Ball Era to mind in his analysis of last years tour.

I know fuck-all about baseball but it got me thinking and researching. What I found might be pertinent. It was Babe Ruth who helped bring the Dead Ball Era to a close and who would go on to a long and storied career. The year was 1922, and Ruth got just two  hits in seventeen in the World Series and seemed washed up, an “exploded phenomenon” according to sportswriter Joe Vila.

By the time of the 1932 World Series, a hostile Chicago crowd was screaming insults at Ruth. With the count at two balls and two strikes Ruth gestured with one hand towards the centre field and hit the next pitch over the centre field fence. It became known as Babe Ruth’s called shot. The greatest answer back to hyena critics  circling the carcass of a dying career, ever.

Question: Has Kelly Slater got the called shot in him?

What calls you on Kelly? Pure spite for the baying hounds, the way Babe Ruth did? Or is there something else, some moment of greatness you are hoping to wrest from the maw of time. Do darker secrets loom? A special contract with the WSL, like the one you signed with Brodie Carr back in 2009 to forestall the rebel tour? We know alright.

The tour can carry on without you now. The slow slide down the rankings, the settling back to earth of the remnants of the exploded phenomena could be done in private.

But if you keep doing it, we’ll keep watching. Till the crack of doom, or you retire, whichever comes first.

9. Joel Parkinson

Rating: Fourteen

Idea for a ten thousand word long read: How Joel Parkinson, son of a genial bricklayer with sad eyes, became the most beautiful surfer in the world. Suffered humiliating defeats, came back from injury and late in career found himself World Champion, not by ascending to any state of grace but by crushing his art under heel and becoming a ruthless sportsman enslaved to a format requiring two sevens to progress.

Extirpated the highs and lows in his surfing, levelled the mountain and the valley, and found the Golden Mean. Not greatness but a winning mediocrity. Template for every world title since.

Where to now for Parko? Shitty last year, sitting in the middle of the rankings, 35 years of age. Remote chance of another title in this Brazilian era.

Could he reverse the instinct-atrophy required of him to become a contender, to remain a contender and rediscover that lightness of touch, that “outlaw feeling of doing something graceful”, in short, rediscover that intoxication which is a prerequisite for any kind of art or aesthetic activity to exist, not for points but for it’s own sake?

But I ask too much. Final paragraph: The tragedy of Parko.

10. Jordy Smith

Rating: Thirteen

Eight years of Jordy on tour gives us a career composed mostly of static, save the runner-up finish in 2010 and some highlights at Bells and J-Bay.

Through the white noise we can distinguish enough of  a clear signal to discern how the remainder will play out. He’s not going to charge the heavy lefts, not going to step up and dominate – do the work like a Fanning or a De Souza or even Parko did to get comfortable at Teahupoo or Pipe.

He’s happy to plod along, maybe too happy.

Why? Too much too soon, and too little expected for it. The curse of Dane and JJF.

Let us look one another in the eye, we surf commenters, and take the sacred cow of a Jordy Smith world title to the abattoir. It’s time we did so.

With the torque generated from that caboose and the finesse in the repertoire Jordy should win every event in overhead rights. Instead, we get Parko-lite and another midnight wanderer on the boulevard of broken dreams.

11. Kolohe Andino

Rating: Twenty-six

Last December I (bravely) predicted an early exit at Pipe for California’s last great white hope. That came to pass. I now (equally bravely) predict the opposite for Snapper. Quarter-final finish minimum. Why?

The over-theatrical top turn, all paralysed force, substance without meaning, has been tamed.  There’s a willingness to engage in the blood feud, thus, anger as friend, as energy, as necessary ingredient. Happy, contented men do not make good competitors. Between the potency and the existence falls the shadow.

No more the shadow for Brother. Not a contender but a top ten finish.

12. Matt Wilkinson 

Rating: Nineteen

Shave him down, put him in a suit and Wilko could be like any other flabby-footed white collar suburban bean counter carrying twenty extra pounds around the mid-riff. A clock-punching nine-to-five workadaddy wage slave looking forwards to two weeks in the Maldives where he can ride an over-foamed fun board in head high reef waves over deep water.

But he ain’t, so from that perspective he’s punching well above his genetic weight and maximising return on his pro surfing investment. Every court needs a jester and Wilko fits that archetype admirably. A niche that is likely to enable him to ride the pro surfing gravy train for a few years yet.

Shave him down, put him in a suit and Wilko could be like any other flabby-footed white collar suburban bean counter carrying twenty extra pounds around the mid-riff. A clock-punching nine-to-five workadaddy wage slave looking forwards to two weeks in the Maldives

Given that he has the talent to be top ten for life we could probably remove the weight of expectation from Wilko and enjoy his career for what it is: a series of spluttering misfires that at some inexplicable and unexplainable point is likely to produce moments of unrestrained brilliance.

Surely you’d expect him to have a victory in him at some point in his career.

13. Taj Burrow

Rating: Seventeen

This could be Taj’s last year on tour? My understanding of his career is always linked to the Ballad of Robbie Johnson. Robbie came up against Taj in the Pro Junior at North Narrabeen, when that was the only comp that mattered for young hopefuls.

Everyone present knew Robbie beat Taj fair and square but the judges pushed Taj through. He was the golden boy of Aussie surfing and it just wouldn’t do to have him knocked out by a no-name.

Robbie tried hard but the sponsors never came. That was his big moment and the injustice took his dream and made it bitter in his heart. Robbie became a working man, one of those who you’d see somewhere and think: he coulda, shoulda been pro.

And what did we get in exchange for the death of the dreams of Robbie Johnson? For someone to prosper, others must fail. We got a long career from Taj, but one attenuated by a refusal to step up when it was most needed. The cosmic balance wasn’t restored by the rorting of Robbie Johnson.