For banishing conservatism and bringing joy back to surfing.
How much have you been enjoying watching professional surfing? Our boys put on such a show! I’ve been liking Mike’s daily wraps and am particularly fond of the way he is hammering the judges on their wanton conservatism. He is exactly right and the judges are exactly wrong.
But how do we fix this disease? And mark my words, it is a disease. Conservatism infects. It gets into the blood and turns everything a dull shade of grey.
Well, I would like to suggest a modest proposal. What if we, the viewers, acted more like an angry Medieval mob and meted out justice for a bad show? Every wave is a canvas, right. And we know what our boys are capable of. And so if a surfer safety turns for a safe score and the judges give him his score then we should demand another, different show.
I feel appropriate theater would be that the judges and the offending surfer kneel on a stage that is specially erected at each event site, in a similar theme to the commentators’ coffee table area, and form a human centipede.
Don’t you think conservatism would soon vanish and our skies would be filled with rainbows and progressive aerials once again?
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
So, does that chick in the human centipede love butt or what?
The secret to winning a world title is no secret. Simply take Porta to a bakery and say, everything you can see is yours.
Fuckin’ Gabby one turn. Easy to score “oh, he hit the lip” x 6
Sure a hell of a lot better than Coffin’s new turn.
Immodest proposal: Fire Richie Portly. Fat fucker is squashing innovation, fairness, and interest in the sport.
Fuck. I agree with Mullet. They just won’t let Slater win. No way in hell Medina’s wave was nearly two points better.
Richie Portly, you bastard. Fucking you can script this. “No GOAT win”.
Too bad Speaker didn’t take Portly with him.
Kelly had 6 heats, 6 motherfucker!, in winding, head high Snapper, ranging from insanely perfect to funky as hell and got one wave- one- in the excellent range.
What he served up was dish after dish of unpronounceable mediocre weirdness, all those little flubbed turns, and half turns and half manufactured recoveries that worked for him back in the 90’s.
Yes, it was variety, but not the kind that blows minds and wins heats. It was almost painful watching him surf, after almost every wave I found myself exclaiming involuntarily: Yuck!. Not once did he get a hold of one of those waves and surf it to it’s potential. Go look at his highest wave score, an 8.33 for an unbelievably perfect wave against Fred Morais. That should have been a 10. But he flubbed the turns so badly he turned it into an 8.
This is weirdness, par excellence, a late style period that aficionados can appreciate on it’s own terms, a dying star……but it’s not going to win heats against brutality and power and big turns fully realized.
Analysis provided foc by yours truly, L.tom.
Damn Crazy Kids with their new-fangled shortboards! What we needs is some good, old-fashioned longboard cruzen’. Nothing new! Just some hangin’ 10 with the Duke!
point me to a wave where Kelly was under-scored, please sir.
Well, there’s two ways to crush the great. Underscore him (which may or may not have happened) or overscore his competitors! Presumably these scores are calculated in context. Ol’ Gabby one turn simply didn’t deserve a 9.17. If Kelly’s was a 7.5 Gabby’s wasn’t 2 points better for the same damn turn, again and again!
maybe you can’t appreciate high powered backhand surfing and what it entails?
Go back and look at the first turn, and then the 2 turns where the wave steepens up. Maybe it was a high 8 and not a low 9. Still, the result was never in question.
“maybe you can’t appreciate high powered backhand surfing and what it entails”
I am profoundly unappreciative. I find it really boring, and, personally, comparatively easy to do (though I’ve studiously avoided video of myself backhand, and it probably isn’t “high powered”).
Don’t you get bored with one-turn, backhand surfing? I know every turn a backhander is going to do before they do it. No innovation, no surprises. Same goddamn way to surf the wave, wherever it is.
Not everyone agrees with me, of course. My prediction: one regular, one backhand, for the final. Backhand wins!
|”Don’t you get bored with one-turn, backhand surfing?”
I reject that premise- that it is one-turn surfing, so I reject your whole argument.
To torture a boxing analogy, Kelly threw air swings all event- he was like a drunken man trying to fight, yes his fight was creative, but it lacked connection- where Gabby connected multiple times with perfect timing, power and precision.
Kelly surprised, yes, but with groans not delight. Go watch his 8.33 against Fred Morais, his best wave of the event and see how he butchers it.
Ah, well, this is where it becomes an issue of subjectivity. It seems to me that Kelly is surfing parts of the wave no one ever touches, that he is being innovative and taking real risks. He seems on the edge of disaster each turn he makes, and my heart is in my throat. Gabby? No real risk in his turns, no doubt he is going to make them. Its Michelangelo vs. Monet. You’ve seen one painting from the latter, you’ve seen them all. Kelly’s the Sistine Chapel, Gabby’s the lily pad painting, again and again.
Innovation is not weirdness.
“It seems to me that Kelly is surfing parts of the wave no one ever touches, that he is being innovative and taking real risks.”
Lol, can you point out such a wave from kelly during the event. I think you are seeing in Kelly’s surfing what you want to see, and thats it’s sentimentality and not subjectivity that is clouding your vision. Happy to be proven wrong.
ps, every single wave he rode is on the heat analyzer.
His wrap is far more critical in terms of projection and reversal, and he’s back in the pocket more abruptly than anyone else on their forehand. Most surfers would bog attempting Kelly’s acute angles, and every time he tried it (this contest anyway) I was uncertain if he would make it. Its a masterclass in being on the edge. Please don’t ask me to name a particular wave, it’s too painful to re-watch knowing that despite his skills, Portly won’t let him win, and the script is already written.
so I guess thats a no. You won;t point to any particular waves where Kelly “is surfing parts of the wave no one ever touches, that he is being innovative and taking real risks.”
Just pick one. I’m a Kelly tragic, you’re amongst your own people here.
Ok. I’ll bite, as painful as it is. Turns 2 and 3 on his 6.33 against Gabby, as an example of what I’m trying to describe. Most wraps are more rounded out. Kelly’s are innovative, almost like he’s taking a protractor surfing down 25 degrees, hitting the point, and rapidly drawing a straightish line. He’s committing to turns in the top third/quarter of the wave, where its faster, allowing him to project faster down the line once he’s completed it.
To take a corollary from skiing, its a slalom turn vs. a GS turn,
wraps? wraps?\
Hello Joe Turpel, welcome to the Grit.
That hurt, you bastard. I mean really hurt. Kick a man when he’s down, when his hero lost kinda hurt.
Now that we’re throwing insults around, Richie, please tell me who’s going win so we can dispense with the formality and expense of a contest.
Did you really enjoy that final? Even Potts was bored. No “wow”. Seriously predictable nonsense in my opinion.
8.33??? for Owen’s last wave? “Excellent range?” Not even close to Kelly’s, yet scored much higher.
Think it’s Kelly’s surfboards. You get crazy fun speed on EPS but no power through your turns. And then your carves look weak, no buckets out the back, judges are ah meh
Not the EPS. It’s just the shitty boards. Think twice before buying a Kelly Shouldn’t Design over a CI. Here’s his boards from the last time he won the contest In 2013
Left to right:
5’9 x 18 1/4 x 2 1/4 EPS Fred Rubble
5’9 x 18 1/4 x 2 1/4 DFR
5’9 x 18 1/4 x 2 1/4 EPS F.R.
5’8 x 18 5/8 x 2 1/4 EPS Fred Rubble
5’6 x 18 7/8 x 2 5/16 EPS #4 Prototype
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
No, it is not the board. He is old now, everyone surfs much better, no thanks to him. But it is time for him to just give it up already. I don’t think he should be able to compete while his ks wave is partnered with the WSL, or at least while he still controls who surfs at that place and who doesn’t.. Shady as fuck. And he is a little whiney bitch too.
For once I thought slater deserved it? I was watching on 240p though. He looked like he mixed it up and changed direction more, Medina was on repeat?
I’ll probably get hung, drawn and quartered for this but I reckon the pugnacious Porte’s judging direction has been spot on.
He said he won’t pay baby barrels down by Rainbow Bay and he hasn’t, which is spot on….a backpacker on a soft top could get a tube ride there.
And he won’t pay toy, flat spin airs with no loft. So, thats good too, because those shitty little airs are a syphilitic chancre on the sport.
This a period of Neo-Classicism. They want every turn fully defined and fully flavoured. All affectation has been comprehensively rejected. They want monsters, not artists.
I understood baby barrel, backpacker and rainbow bay.
Italo throws caution to the wind, judges give him a 10.
Competitors moan.
Can the judges ever win?
what about inflicting the same punishment that MC receives when he publishes shit part 1 and 2 articles?..Hang on , there is none and you can’t even deduct pay from free content???
I think the future of surfing needs to be about big combo’s. A simple fix would be if the surfer completes the same manoeuvre twice on the same wave they automatically get disqualified and have to suck Kelly off.
I laughed five or six times at your username. Combo of the year!
Or we could get Negatron to delete their disqus accounts.
But how would we publicly mock?
Good question. Who could we ask for ideas? It would have to be someone really experienced – someone who’s earned a living for many moons mocking people withing the surf industry….
*Edit: earned a “living”
We could ask our very own Abe Lincoln of surf, in between his morning nap and bridge game
A walk of atonement would suffice.