Zeke Lay eats John John alive, Parko surfs like new-born giraffe with foetal alcohol syndrome!

Isn’t life the most whimsical, curious and inscrutable of affairs? It’s what I love about Pro Surfing, above all else: this eternal tilting at the windmill of a mainstream audience, its earnest and blackly (unintentionally) comic embrace of total corpo-speak, the smoke and mirrors faking it until you make it pieces in the mainstream business media. Its subtle and none-too-subtle shifts and changes that seem to leave all concerned – especially the surfers, sorry athletes – clueless and gawping like goldfish in a bowl.

I do not jeer. Believe me. Especially after a day like today. 

People say to me all the time: “Why do you fucken write about pro surfing if you fucking hate it so much?” Lovers of the game think I should love and true haters think any attention is legitimacy to the evil commercialisation in surfing.

Jared Diamond in his foreword to Guns, Germs and Steel said in relation to similar objections to writing about Human History : “This objection rests on a common tendency to confuse an explanation of causes with a justification or acceptance of results”, which sums up my response on the matter perfectly. 

You’d go a long way to find a more curious, bizarre in Strider’s words, morning in Pro Surfing history. I tuned in and after wrassling with the WSL webby which persisted in locking into yesterday’s stream and got live action halfway into the Zeke Lau/JJF round three heat. Replays showed Zeke, with a face like an Easter Island statue and physique to match, had monstered John, got all up in his grill and had sent the world champ into a tailspin. Combo’ed, Florence fell, then fell again as the clock ticked down. It was thrilling and almost wincingly painful to watch, like a David Attenborough documentary where the elegant ruminant gets savaged by a lion then has its insides ripped out by a pack of hyaenas. The champ looked so helpless. All that insouciance at the Gold Coast was gone and in its place was a  lonely blond-haired kid being frowned upon by an older man on the stairs who shook his head sadly as the siren sounded. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhFnjT_l39T/?hl=en&taken-by=zekelau

John’s presser was abject. He looked terrible. Bags under the eyes like a parkie who’d skulled a flagon of cheap port and spent the night curled up in a bus stop. He called Zeke’s aggression “kinda lame” and said “I might do it in the next event.” Which made me snort my coffee and shout aloud “As if!”

John has no aggro in his game. None. Unlike Fanning, who brings an intensity to any recreational lineup, I have no qualms getting my quota if John showed at my local breaks.

Putting it bluntly, and regretfully, Parko’s surfing in his heat with Fred Morais was farcical, almost risible. It was borderline slapstick. He looked as coordinated and solid as a new-born giraffe with foetal alcohol syndrome stumbling it’s way across New York’s central park on New years Eve. Yes, it was that surreal. Only a faint vestigial image of something graceful and elegant was visible in the bumbling performance he laid on. To be charitable, and in his own words, he had a shocker. 

Strider said it might be something in the water, as even the king of three turns and a solid finish Adriano De Souza struggled with standing on a surfboard. But what? There are drugs that make people smart, like Modafinil and Ritalin and Coffee. What could have made the best in the world stumble about like English accountants on a Friday night? Rohypnol? Ether? Had the earth’s magnetic field been reversed, as has happened before, overnight and suddenly everything was topsy turvy and upside down? Maybe it was just sleep deprivation, the Top 34 seems like Daddy Day Care these days and every Dad knows that wobbly burnt out feeling of being kept up all hours by a screaming kiddy. I don’t know. 

It took four heats before the curtain was drawn on the slapstick and Filipe and Italo took the lineup. If you read any of the Snapper coverage you’ll know Italo is my boy. Using Nick Carroll’s objective analysis method I determined him to be the fastest surfer on Tour and the best goofyfoot and believe, to date, he has been crucially underscored. Like the Gold Coast, it’s a shame he had to meet Filipe so early in the draw. It’ll probably be the best heat of the comp. Toledo made a grey, wobbly lineup and grey sky shine with the light of a thousand suns. He blitzed and shralped and threw high speed edges at every half lip and corner he could find. Alone, he made it seem like a different lineup. But Italo was better. Very, very big high-speed cornering from bottom to top and massive finishes with perfect handling. My heart was in my throat watching Italo’s second ride with six minutes to go and needing a score. when he stuck a huge landing I found myself fist-pumping and saying “Yes!” First heat I’ve watched where Occy Skins ’97 looked dated. Could have gone either way but I think the judges have finally caught on to the fact that Italo is leading this wobbly old peloton. 

An hour’s break and back to Winki with more gurgle to deal with for round four. Maybe something is biding its time, over the horizon and is ready to announce its arrival. Give this year it’s shape and definition; the way John’s performance at Margaret River did last year. 

Michel Bourez was simply sensational and for all the big new meathead journeymen on Tour with hams the size of Sally Fitzgibbon, there is no one even close to him as the premier power surfer on Tour. That reminds of a post Chas Smith wrote about the rise of midget surfers… hold that thought, we’ll come back to it. 

Mick Fanning was several shades off the pace in his round four heat with Wilko and Pat Gudauskas, and I feel like a worm for insinuating yesterday that Pat had nothing to offer except a few miserable sixes and sevens. He just looks… a little too hyped up for my taste. At least he didn’t get his coffee spiked with rohypnol this morning. Mick made a mistake, gave Wilko a scoring wave, looked resigned to losing and having his last heat, was over-scored on a ride which got him back into it and then loosed the old instincts to win the heat. Pressure now for a fairytale finish will be acute and severe.

Zeke Lau, Fred Morais, Italo and Gabe are through from round four. 

Am I seeing this correct?

I often lie awake in the wee hours, unable to sleep, listening to the whine of a mosquito, wondering. what if I’m dead wrong? I don’t do Facebook much but I saw an update from the surf journalist Nick Carroll who stated, “There’s a potentially great and very challenging round three draw in the Bells men’s event. A lot of good surf coming, and some of the heats could go very big. I don’t normally hype the CT, it gets enough of that, but whoa. Take a look if you can.” 

That is a totally different perspective to mine. I have to cleave to the view of commenter Wiggoly’s Paddling Style, who with his great flair for the scatalogical, sent me an email today saying, “This Bells is about as exciting as a half-sucked cock at a wedding.”

What are you seeing? Where does the truth lie?

Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Remaining Round 3 Results:
Heat 7: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 13.07 def. John John Florence (HAW) 9.76
Heat 8: Frederico Morais (PRT) 11.60 def. Joel Parkinson (AUS) 9.07
Heat 9: Conner Coffin (USA) 9.83 def. Adriano De Souza (BRA) 9.63
Heat 10: Italo Ferreira (BRA) 16.60 def. Filipe Toledo (BRA) 15.40
Heat 11: Jeremy Flores (FRA) 11.86 def. Adrian Buchan (AUS) 11.73
Heat 12: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 14.16 def. Willian Cardoso (BRA) 13.30

Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Round 4 Results:
Heat 1: Michel Bourez (PYF) 15.77, Owen Wright (AUS) 12.00, Wade Carmichael (AUS) 10.60
Heat 2: Mick Fanning (AUS) 14.33, Patrick Gudauskas (USA) 14.00, Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 13.17
Heat 3: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) 12.57, Frederico Morais (PRT) 11.16, Conner Coffin (USA) 11.10
Heat 4: Gabriel Medina (BRA) 13.33, Italo Ferreira (BRA) 12.17, Jeremy Flores (FRA) 11.00

Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Quarterfinal Matchups:
QF 1: Michel Bourez (PYF) vs. Patrick Gudauskas (USA)
QF 2: Mick Fanning (AUS) vs. Owen Wright (AUS)
QF 3: Ezekiel Lau (HAW) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
QF 4: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT)

 

Pro surfing in the post-Kelly, post-Mick era in limbo as Aussie leg fails to fire… 

Doom and gloom? Not me boss. I’m a cheerful pessimist, by nature.

When this planet goes up in smoke the chosen ones will board a silver spaceship and fly mother nature’s seed to a new home in the sun.  It’s just that in the post-Kelly, post-Mick, pre-wavepool era, pro surfing is in limbo. This Aussie leg is failing to fire and we, we being all of us Australian surf fans who are the bedrock of the tour who can support 3 CT’s with a population of just over 20 mill, are wondering if the ground we are standing on is solid.

Or not.

Soph is not reassuring us.

We are bewildered by pro surfing 2018, not depressed.

Do you recall those wonderful scenes from the concluding stages of the best surf film ever made, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now? Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz and Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard are facing off finally after a long tortuous journey. In a tense and extended tete-a-tete, Kurtz delivers his Philosophy of War to Willard, detailing the story of how Viet Cong soldiers went into a village and hacked off the arms of little children who had been vaccinated for polio by the west.

“My God, these men who had love in their hearts,” Kurtz said, “had the strength… the strength to do that… if I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly.”

Correct if wrong, but could not Sophie G solve her audience growth problems, very, very quickly if she had ten divisions of the Australian surf fan at her disposal to import across the world at will?

The American surf fan, with all due respect, is useless.

Utterly, utterly useless.

Can’t support a single CT on either Pacific or Atlantic shores. The hopped-up Okie they appointed to Ambassador of Leisure and Stoke, the great representative of middle America, disappeared without trace down god knows what Hawaiian rabbit hole. Middle America cared more, paid more attention to pro surfing in the mid-sixties when CBS network covered live the Duke Kahanomoku classic. Fact.

Kelly was the most bankable and reliable magic maker in world sport. And for a little while it seemed like John John Florence might repeat the dose, might bestride the pro surfing landscape like Genghis Khan did the Eurasian steppe, as Kelly once did. Conquering all. Vanquishing all. On our behalf. So we could be entertained and transcend our miserable little existences and forget all our flaws and deficiencies.

Being a pro surfing fan, even a reluctant one, was an easy game to play for twenty years. Lock in behind Kelly, then Andy, then Dane, or whatever member of the Coolie crew got you hard, get your mind blown, then hit it and quit while you were ahead. Ignore the back-markers unless they went deep into the draw.

Kelly was the most bankable and reliable magic maker in world sport. And for a little while it seemed like John John Florence might repeat the dose, might bestride the pro surfing landscape like Genghis Khan did the Eurasian steppe, as Kelly once did. Conquering all. Vanquishing all. On our behalf. So we could be entertained and transcend our miserable little existences and forget all our flaws and deficiencies.

But no, now we have to wade through acres and acres of over-coached torrid journeymen viciously hurling sixes and sevens at each other. At least, so far anyhow. John is no Kelly. He won’t dominate generations the way Kelly did, or maybe even Andy did. Ronnie Blakey said the new judging scale was a boon for spectators, that it made it more exciting. Ronnie, as someone who has mingled their sweat down in cattle class with the great unwashed, I know, and you know, that ain’t so.

It seemed as if judges had completely screwed the spread on the opening exchange with Wade Carmichael, handing it to Wade instead of Jordy. A second look showed Wade clearly out-powered him, and did so again to take the heat. Jordy raged against the judging scale but the brutal truth is he safety surfed, knowing safety surfing was to be penalised.”

Six heats played Lumpelstiltskin in raggedy Bells Bowl this morning beginning with Jordy and Wade Carmichael. After Jordy’s definition of flow went public I was ready to deduct a .25 for every spaz-pump he laid down between turns, but he conducted the first wave with perfect flow, throwing golden showers heavenwards on each turn.

It seemed as if judges had completely screwed the spread on the opening exchange with Wade Carmichael, handing it to Wade instead of Jordy. But in retrospect a second look showed Wade clearly out-powered him, and did so again to take the heat. Jordy raged against the judging scale but the brutal truth is he safety surfed, knowing safety surfing was to be penalised and suffered the consequences.

Bourez and Owen Wright were too good for Kolohe and Jesse Mendes. Both could be finalists or winners on current form but you’d be crazy brave to make that call based on the year to date.

I was curious to see how Fanning would be scored now that the judging panel has decreed the Fanning era over. And the answer was, as expected, low. Seabass opened up a two-point spread on the opening exchange and that really should have been a heat winning lead, based on current scoring. The crux of the heat turned on a very, very shonky used car Fanning wheeled to the front of the lot, put the keys in and convinced Zietz to drive away in, “Just give it a test drive maaaayte, great runner, comes with a free case of Balter beer and a softboard for the kids!”

Seabass bought the pup, scored a three and Fanning had nothing much more to do except ride a set wave, protect the lead with priority and enjoy the love of the victorian surf fan.

By the by, how refreshing, how relaxing to just have six heats for the morning then call the thing off? If the Wave Pool comp does nothing else than make suits reconsider format it will have been worth it. Eight hours straight of pro surfing would drive the Dalai Lama to pharmaceuticals. As it turned out, three hours, six heats, felt sublime.

Griff had plenty to say in the booth yesterday. He identified the opening turn as the one being paid most heavily by judges. Incorrectly. At Bells it’s the opening and closing turns. The primacy, recency effect. It’s the first and last things in a sequence that have the strongest effect. The things we remember, judges included.

That is no slur on Griff’s surfing despite a growing mountain of hype. He has the best closing turn on tour. As seen at Haliewa, as seen at Bells this morning. That whole-body huck will win many heats but you need something at the start to make it conclusive. Wilko put two huge turns with air drops as punctuation on a heat winning wave to put the heat away. Griff’s buzzer air-reverse was not enough but did it at least show he knew what could win.

Is Bells going to mean anything by years end? Is Snapper? The deck seems to be completely reshuffled and no one is standing on solid ground. Julian won Snapper then put on a tepid performance for the final heat of the day against Pat Gudauskas. So often he follows up something brilliant with something lame, can’t seem to produce what is needed, despite an army of cliches at his disposal for the post-heat presser and the best all round technique on tour. Is that a problem of will, of destiny or maybe some deficit that can be overcome in time?

Time that is running out. For him, for you, for the human race.

Kidding. Take a joke you misery guts!

Silver spaceships will save us all! And the Australian surf fan will be first picked to colonise space.

Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Round 3 Results:
Heat 1: Wade Carmichael (AUS) 13.30 def. Jordy Smith (ZAF) 12.17
Heat 2: Michel Bourez (PYF) 12.84 def. Kolohe Andino (USA) 9.66
Heat 3: Owen Wright (AUS) 15.14 def. Jesse Mendes (BRA) 10.33
Heat 4: Matt Wilkinson (AUS) 13.77 def. Griffin Colapinto (USA) 12.33
Heat 5: Mick Fanning (AUS) 13.56 def. Sebastian Zietz (HAW) 9.10
Heat 6: Patrick Gudauskas (USA) 10.73 def. Julian Wilson (AUS) 9.37

Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach Remaining Round 3 Matchups:
Heat 7: John John Florence (HAW) vs. Ezekiel Lau (HAW)
Heat 8: Joel Parkinson (AUS) vs. Frederico Morais (PRT)
Heat 9: Adriano de Souza (BRA) vs. Conner Coffin (USA)
Heat 10: Filipe Toledo (BRA) vs. Italo Ferreira (BRA)
Heat 11: Adrian Buchan (AUS) vs. Jeremy Flores (FRA)
Heat 12: Gabriel Medina (BRA) vs. Willian Cardoso (BRA)