Nothing raises a surfer's hackles like the racket and the ball!
One long ten days ago I asked, right here, who is surfing’s natural enemy? We all need an enemy. Someone to kick against. Someone to really oooooooooooh just hate. And as I thought about surfing it felt like we didn’t have one.
You, of course, were so helpful suggesting mental health, work, chaffing, self, $2 parking, etc. and I would gladly accept any of these and form committees to combat and write hate messages about on my surfboard. But just this morning as I sat down with my delivered daily copy of Olympics.org that surfing chose an enemy six short years ago and has been chaffing against ever since.
Tennis!
Oh you recall the original harangue. It is in our hall of fame!
And since then I have read various passive-aggressive bashes against tennis culminating in surfing’s Olympic ambassador, the reason our boys will fight for gold in three medium years. Reef’s ex-owner, Argentina’s own Fernando Aguerre just today!
He told Olympics.org:
“We had paddled out but there were no waves,” Aguerre said. “We kind of figured out that waves were going to come at some point but we didn’t really know when they were going to come because they were out of our control.”
“Then he got elected and started talking about Agenda 2020 and it was approved and then I realised this looked like real waves.”
Suddenly things began to tumble into place. First, in 2015 surfing was unanimously voted on to the programme for the 2019 Pan American Games, in Lima, Peru. And then came the big one, in Rio de Janeiro, on the eve of the 2016 Olympic Games.
The “real work” has started now and the high is, for Aguerre, clearly still intoxicating.
“Now they (young people) don’t need to become tennis players or track and field athletes, they can be surfers and Olympians,” the Argentine said with obvious pride.
But I don’t get it. What makes tennis so bad? It’s played outside, the scoring is not subjective, the men are handsome, the women are beautiful, the money is good. It’s both easy to understand and enjoyable to watch.
Is surfing just jealous? Is that why?
Help me understand!
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Are you out of your mind? CEO Goldschmidt is a former pro tennis player who is best friends with Maria Sharapova! You play this one right, Chas, and it could be cocktails on the deck at Chez Maria’s in Malibu!
I called you helpful!
Tennis has given us so much – Lacoste, Fred Perry, adidas Stan Smiths, Michael Chang’s Reebok Pumps, Agassi’s headbands.
On the surf side we’ve got giant Billabong Metallica boardshorts, Quicksilver Saltwater Denim, green Rip Curl wetsuits, flannel hooded ponchos, and surf grass mats.
No wonder they hate tennis.
It’s a toss up. I love women’s tennis possibly more than women’s surfing. Probably because I only watch women’s tennis to perv out.
I hate it because they are closing the parking lot by the Ashe stadium for commuters all next week and I have to deal with uptown douches on the train into Queens for 2 weeks.
Was Bobby on speed back then?
About tenis…
People who dislike claims, or get mad by them, should looking for tenis at beggining at sec XX or maybe before Big Mac, Connors, Becker, Nastasie…
All this mad about claims are bullshit, an aristocratic feeling for early XX / mid 70’s, or for an iconic image of soul surf
Occy on the 80’s claim one of the first aereos of competitive surf, throwing to the public and judges, a banana!
It’s documented on one of the surf movies by Billabong in the 80’s… can’t remember which…
I think a few of the guys went to the Open on the lay days of the Long Beach comp so it was very apropos for Bobby to make the comparison. The unfortunate difference however is that Women’s tennis is far more interesting than Men’s tennis and has been for some time. Women’s surfing..not nearly as interetsing as the Men’s.
The plains indians used to measure their prestige by the greatness of their enemies. If tennis is our enemy, they’d be laughing at us now.
Have you ever seen how aggressively poor most pro surfers are at throwing a ball, let alone trying to hit one that’s moving? They should hate tennis. It mocks them.
Thanks to garbage human and (therefore) future trump cabinet member Peter King, I have seen Nat Young, Jack Freestone, and Keanu Asing play basketball. You aren’t wrong, Tomster.
It me.
most surfers are as athletically gifted as rob machado. i.e., they suck at everything else
Any sport that determines you have “Love” when you haven’t “scored” is unequivocally fucked up. Or incredibly insightful. I don’t believe it to be the latter.
It’s the liberal hippy agenda. ‘Love all’.
Oh…..I thought tennis was mocking my love life. One more reason I can dislike liberals.
Tennis on my 80in flatscreen is titties. People who bag on the sport are idiots. It is just giant ping-pong, except with scoring to 4 points. The commercials do fucking suck however, ESPN is struggling right now and it shows with the amount of commercials they are shelling out, it is almost as bad as american football in that regard. Only watchable with DVR.
its funny you say that because the reason you’re seeing so many commercials is that sports is the last thing that the majority of people will watch live to avoid seeing who won on one of their four main social media platforms and rendering your record/playback scheme mostly harmless
What in the hell are you talking about?
people being unsatisfied with DVR as applied to sporting events when they care about the result
Lay off that kush brah.
It irks me that tennis comps always have perfect waves, as it were