Italo Ferriera wins, world title goes to Pipe etc.

I had to laugh the other day. Chas did it, he always makes me laugh. Not on the Grit, but in Penthouse magazine. He was being interviewed spruiking Cocaine +Surfing, A Love Story. Running the line that surfing is a curse, a dangerous, difficult addiction that ruins lives etc etc. I know there is a clear line here, between those who think thus and others like Nick Carroll and me who think surfing is no drama, and in fact, quite a blessing.

Chas gets it ass backwards in my opinion. The curse is not surfing, but surf-writing. That’s the dangerous addiction, the slimy little hole to curl up and masturbate in. Tedious and brief is how S-Town’s John B Macklemore summed up life. He might have been summing up the “careers” of surf writers. Tedious and brief.

Two hours sleep, twelve hours driving and I got home and the beloved had the car packed.

“Whats going on?” I said.

“We’re going to Iluka, our anniversary. Remember?”

My blood froze.

“But, but I’ve got Portugal to cover”.

“You fucking dumb arse, fuck Portugal!”

So here I am, in the Iluka pub, Ipswich dogs on one screen, Wentworth trots on the other, and a whole heap of ‘splainin to do in the morning.

Travis Logie puts the finals on hold at six until seven, seven until eight, eight until 9.30. 9.30 until 10.15. 10.15 until 11.30. 11.30 until 12.15. There might have been more calls. Four quarters, a semi and a final. How could surfing ever be this much of a ball-ache? Tedious and more long winded than the Old Testament.

The pub shuts and I’m driving around Iluka backstreets parked up next to asbestos fishing shacks like a crackhead. A gaggle of drunk chicks stagger past screaming 4 Non Blondes What’s Up at the top of their lungs.

I text my lady: Late start, home by three am.

She texts back: Fuck this shit. Ring Derek and pull out. Give him his money back.

I text back: Can’t babe. Already spent it before I got it (sheepish emoji).

Only two questions remain. Can Medina win the event and will Julian fall to Duru in the Quarters? In my dirty little black heart I want Wilson to fall, Medina to win. Get some sort of climax to justify the sleep deficit and marital strife.

Italo smashed Bourez in QF1 in fluffy head-high surf, a redux of their Keramas final.

Kaipo called Medina’s performance in QF2 relentless. There’s no better word for it. He took to the air every wave. Every single one made. 100% make rate for most of a half hour heat with the World Title on the line. Judges seemed sleepy and unresponsive. There was confusion expressed by Fanning in the booth over the numbers. He called the low-balling by the judges this year “disheartening”. Medina ground ahead. Flat, fast spins with perfect landings, corked tail-high whips. Finally on wave 11 he fell on a backflip attempt. Heat analyser will not do it justice. It was an insane performance. It rendered Wilkinson mute. Medina called Wilko’s attempts to play “mind games” on Insta “pretty funny”.

Ten minutes passed in the Wilson/Duru QF with the ocean unresponsive, still in recovery after the Medina onslaught. Duru laid down the first scoring track at the half way point. A flat seven for a well surfed but forgettable right. J-dub threw forced airs into the wind with no luck, then went to meat and potatoes. No dice. Duru lanced another small right and that was it. Wilson out. My heart soared.

Crunch time in the Medina/Italo semi. Medina had promised an air show and that was what was delivered. Every wave. Pump, pump, punt. After a semi like that and France the Air Show concept has to be put back on the shelf. Completely redundant. Medina held a solid lead after greasing a slick alley oop. I desperately wanted Gabby to bring it home. Not to be. Italo launched a very lofted full-rotation reverse into the breeze for a 9.3 and the heat. We go to Pipe. Boo hoo.

The hate against the WSL on Facey was astounding. The call to run was impugned. The boggy Facebook feed drew rage. It put the WSL in full defensive mode. Trav Logie was called upon to justify the call. Kaipo implored peeps struggling with the Facey feed to go back to a desktop and watch on WSL.com. Fine if you can. Not that easy parked up in a back alley in a small fishing town watching on a phone.

Correct if wrong but when Erik brings in a premium direct-to-consumer experience, or whatever the latest business buzzwords are for pay per view, won’t the whole despised, disastrous Facebook deal have to be nixed? There can’t be a person alive amongst the 4 billion on Planet Earth who’ll stump cold hard cash for a boggy facebook feed.

Right? It’s possible at 3.30am I may not be seeing the full picture clearly. Feel free to correct.

Can’t tell you exactly much about the Final between Italo Ferreira and the giant killing Joan Duru. I noted the Facey live audience went from a more or less solid 14K to 9K and change, then magically Italo was being chaired up the beach, the winner, in a soft Portugese evening light. I must have passed out, again. Three tour victories for Italo. If not for a couple of dubious judging decisions he’d be in the race. As Fanning noted, surfers have been mystified by some of the calls.

Sunday morning.

Nothing easy about it. I feel like a whore whose done too many hard tricks. Fuck Europe, Fuck the WSL and if anyone offers a surf writing gig kids, just say no. It’s the biggest evolutionary cul de sac God ever invented. If you see a surf writer standing on the Pacific Highway outside the Iluka turnoff help a brother out, would ya. For the love of God.

See you at Pipe.

World title scenarios: 

– If Gabriel Medina finishes 1st or 2nd at the Billabong Pipe Masters, he wins the World Title;
– If Gabriel Medina finishes 3rd at the Billabong Pipe Masters, Julian Wilson & Filipe Toledo will need to finish 1st;
– If Gabriel Medina finishes 5th-25th, Julian Wilson & Filipe Toledo will need a 2nd or 1st at Pipe. 

2018 WSL Men’s CT Jeep Leaderboard (After MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal):
1 – Gabriel Medina (BRA) 56,190 pts
2 – Julian Wilson (AUS) 51,450 pts
2 – Filipe Toledo (BRA) 51,450 pts
4 – Italo Ferreira (BRA) 43,070 pts
5 – Owen Wright (AUS) 35,570 pts

Stylish male surfers channel inner gal…

I really don’t think it’s a stretch to call the Australian Stephanie Gilmore the best female surfer of all time, and perhaps, one of the game’s best choreographers. There’s an accessibility to her surfing as well as a freedom and a joy, even if it feels a little confected sometimes.

In an interview with Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper yesterday, Gilmore played the usual hits: pay gap, insecure men in the lineup, having to wear a damn bikini and be sexy and how she’d be three times wealthier if she was a man or as gorgeous as Giselle and so on.

Sample quotes.

“There’s always a couple of local guys who will flex and try and overpower you with their testosterone. I do know that there are a lot of women who feel it a lot and there are guys out there who are a nightmare to surf with.”

“When there’s a couple of girls in the line up who surf better than them, I think their egos get a little bit of a check.”

“If the waves were terrible and you put the men out in them, it’s going to be boring too. Now, when the women actually surf great waves, everyone’s like, ‘oh my god, the girls are ripping, they’ve come so far’ and we’re like, ‘no, we surf like that. We just never used to get the chance to show you’.’

Her posit, towards the end, that the best surfers approach a wave like women is a new angle and one that I like very much.

“When you think about the most stylish male surfers – Tom Curren, Joel Parkinson  – guys who, when you watch them are so fluid and seamless. They have a graceful touch. It’s funny, people say to me, ‘you surf like a guy’. But actually, no, the greatest guy surfers surf like girls.”

Do you surf like a girl or wish that you surfed like a girl?

Come try the WSL's comprehensive survey…

I’ve had a visceral hatred of surveys and focus groups and whatever other marketing that presumes the consumer knows what he wants since I worked on a fading men’s magazine back in the early two thousands.

Watched twenty-five grand disappear as I sat behind a one-way window looking at twenty-somethings paw at the mag and say, “Yeah, nah, yeah”, “More girls, maybe”.

Focus groups. Surveys. Bullshit after bullshit.

No one knows what they want until it slams ’em in the face. People will say what they think you want ’em to say or what they think makes ’em look smart. Put hip-hop through a focus group in the disco era and it never would’ve happened. All those great movies that were made on the back of some crazy genius, Raging Bull, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather?  Too slow, too opaque.

According to surveys, Mad ol Hillary Clinton was going to be the forty-fifth prez and Britain wasn’t gonna Brexit.

Now, as has been mentioned in the comments, the World Surf League has a survey doing the rounds. And she’s a doozy, as old-timers like to say. Obvs, it’s a feeler to see how we’re coping with the idea of pay-per-view but it also calls for a comprehensive self-examination.

Paired attitudinal statements where you hit a slider,

The little game, below, where you’re asked to respond to the statement “I am an expert surfer” is a curly one ain’t she?

What is an expert surfer? Is it someone who knows how to carry their board, insert their fins in the position suggested on the packaging, stand up on an unbroken wave and combo a couple of turns?

Or is it, as I would think, someone who can, or could before they got too old, take a set at Pipe and beat a small wave to hell. Some sort of shaping skill would help, too.

Kelly Slater is an expert surfer. John John too. Gerry Lopez, I suppose. Barton Lynch.

But a clown fan punching buttons on his laptop?

Other important questions: Do you spend a lot of money on surfing gear? 

Are you always talking about surfing with your friends? 

Do here! (Fifty percent off WSL merch if you do before October 24, too.)