Opinion: Tuberides Overscored at J-bay!

Rule of thumb: If you can shove your whole arm in it, you probably don't want to be inside!

I was waiting to post this, out of respect for Longtom’s contest-wrap territory.

From a writing standpoint, the offense of diluting someone else’s topic warrants nothing short of a SharkAttack, and I’ve already enough issues in regards to vital limbs.

(Somewhat) thankfully, Shearer touched on the very topic I wish to discuss, if only in passing. He said, in regards to Filipe Toledo’s 19.63 performance, “Judges got the score order wrong: the first wave, given a 9.63, was the Ten.”

And while I don’t agree with the general sentiment that either of those waves deserved a ten, or, as Longtom says, the judges should have felt a ten, I believe the point within his point was this: tubes are being overscored at J-Bay.

And I would agree, to the nth.

Now, this argument is built upon the feeble shoulders of subjectivity, meaning that you have the right to lambast, ridicule, and poke fun at every facet of my person. But doesn’t it bother you that guys are getting eights, nines, tens even, for flimsy, stall-heavy tubes? The types of tubes that you’d claim to your friends for weeks, but also the types of tubes would warrant fours and fives at Cloudbreak?

J-Bay is a performance wave, plain and simple. Can you get very barreled? Yes, but when we think of J-Bay, we think of Fanning and Curren drawing impossibly long lines, not Johnny Pintail threading a double-up down the end.

The barrels at this event have been mostly high, tight, and unimpressive, aside from the surfers’ abilities in limberness and “speed management”, noted also by Long T. But do we remember Snapper, or any other event for that matter, where Richie Porta has said, without equivocation, that the judges don’t want to see soft, stally tubes? That they want to see freight trains running down the track and the surfer, the symbolic just-too-late lover in this instance, chasing down the locomotive for his last chance at romance?

Then why the hell did Jeremy Flores get a nine for his top third of the wave, nose sticking out the whole way, capped off only with a non-commital drop wallet barrel ride?

Keep in mind Jeremy is on my Fantasy Team when I say, that was complete and utter bullshit.

The same is true for Leo F. and Filipe T and maybe even John.

The way I see it is this — most anyone can luck into one of those long, tight, J-Bay runners. The pros ride them exceptionally well, but to equate stalling and squeezing with driving off the bottom and turning the lip inside-out is a travesty, especially at a wave with such an incredible canvas for maneuvers. I often feel they’d be better off dodging the barrel altogether, unless it’s one of the throaty runners down the end.

In making this argument, I feel it’s necessary to divulge one important fact: given the timezone disparity between CA and SA, I’ve not been able to watch any of the event live. Watching in realtime, I think, is a vital component to wholly understanding the judging scale of any given day, or heat.

But let me ask you this — when 2018 rolls around, and the WSL drops a 2017 highlight package to hype the upcoming J-Bay event, what clips do you think they’ll use? John threading a waist-high tube on an overhead wave, or John laying down a vicious, fin-flashing frontside hack?

You know, like Gabby’s 6.97 at Cloudbreak that has broken the WSL’s VHS…

Stick that in your judging criteria.