Pipe Masters, Day 2: Filipe Toledo goes down swinging at ten-foot Pipe on “epic, epic day!”

"Each of Kelly Slater's rides I took as personal rebuke, as kick in the nuts."

How to make sense of this epic, epic day? Feel free to riff below, there’ll be lots of meat left on the bone.

The sun was just cresting the mau’ka over Mokule’ia when Toledo hit the water against Benji Brand in wobbly, glassy six-to-ten-foot Pipe.

How do you rebuild after a disastrous performance like his round one showing? Ten minutes passed with no waves ridden. Minutes composed of seconds and micro-seconds, thousands and thousands of Pottzian nervous moments piled like bricks on the psyche of Filipe Toledo.

He scrapped for the inside and took off deep on a legit Pipe wave, ponying over two foam balls to get an eight. I scribbled “world title wave”. Brand took the lead and with a minute and change remaining. Toledo, needing a 3.76, scrapped into a mid-for for the win. 

“Lets talk about pressure,” said Rosie Hodge. Filipe physically buckled, folded in half. A bodily response that said more than any words could about the mental state of the second time challenger. 

The dual heat format: Oh please God, can we have that at every location when the surf is pumping. To see waves being ridden, or at least attempted, made turning away impossible.

Kieren, I know you are reading. Please, make it happen.

Owen Wright had a 100% make rate in a lineup now being strafed by end to end close-outs, and with makeable waves at a premium, still lost. Wildcard Seth Moniz double pumped no hands through an open cavern and with the joie de vivre of a teenage shoo-ey at a sunlit beergarden on a Sunday afternoon greased a lofty punt on the end section.

He moves through the pipe lineup like a young Ali.

Sinuous, smooth and note perfect with his strikes.

I’ve already forgotten who Kelly Slater surfed against in heat six. He rode a 6’3” round-pin Tokoro four fin.

Wave 1: a clean teepee Pipe wave. Easy make. 

Wave 2: Kelly packs a brutal close-out at Backdoor. Extreme punishment reel getting back out. 

In his extended podcast with Joe Rogan Kelly made pains to say surfing didn’t require that much strength or conditioning training. He looked gassed. Like Conor McGregor getting mauled by Khabib Nurmogomedov. 

Did you secretly and shamefully smirk behind the safety of a keyboard like me? Where’s your cardio now eh Kelly?

Wave 3: Pipe wave, no exit.

Wave 4: No exit, big sets feathering through the line-up. 

He can’t take much more of this punishment, surely.

Wave 5: Backdoor bomb, bodysurfed out. No make.

Wave 6: Pipe wave, no hands entry to the tube. No exit. 

He did what he needed to do to beat Willian Cardoso, which admittedly wasn’t much. But what he did do was an intense sparring session, with a ton of intentional punishment at the worlds heaviest wave. How can you comprehend that from a 46-year-old who spends most of his time sitting in a trailer under a tree hundreds of miles from the ocean?

Ryan Callinan showed an almost insane level of joyfulness in the kind of gnarly Pipe line-up that would cripple a working man. Like a grinning labrador fetching a stick with the aggression of Jake the Muss being asked to cook eggs. And the stick was a brown snake. He packed closeouts, he flirted with extreme take-offs under the axe all with a goofy grin, that, as Ronnie Blakey rightfully noted “you couldn’t wipe off his face with a cricket bat”. He did to Italo what Italo does to Medina: come at him with such a super-abundance of extravagant energy and skill that he makes his opponent effectively shrink and disappear down a rabbit hole.

To lay a pitch perfect passive-aggressive period on his performance Kelly Slater when asked by Rosie what he thought of Ryans bomb quipped straight back “what, the one he didn’t make?” 

It was starting to feel like one of those rare vintage Kelly days, when that lethal combination of magic and ultra-spiteful competitiveness drips out of every pore and infuses every second with possibility.

Wilko finished his career as a CT surfer, most likely; with an air drop out of a Backdoor bomb that went straight to the beach on the final buzzer. As a Finale it wasn’t without a certain sad theatricality. 

In the presser afterwards he confessed to feeling “sad and confused”, then, looked upwards at Rosie Hodge in an off-the-shoulder Laurel Canyon ’67 blouse and, looking somewhat heartened, added “but I’m sweet”.

Seabass called his Rnd3, Ht 5 clash with Griffin Colapinto “psycho” and that is money. Both dropped out of the sky on unmakeable waves that are fun to be cavalier over but could really have been “death on a stick”.

Gabe Medina came up against the smiling, boyish assassin Seth Moniz. Title on the line. Here we go again, as Medina put it. First wave: outrageous gambit. An insane drop, technically threaded tube through multiple heaving backdoor sections to a full sand-bar close-out. Medina sqeaked out the doggy door and got false cracked by the lip as he did so. It was a 20 if he stayed on his feet. 

Moniz was critically under-scored for a backdoor bomb, coming out after the spit. 

Judges compounded the error by over-scoring Medina for a technical but manufactured tube-ride. By the heat and the days standard, the point spread was distorted by a point. Medina answered a seesawing lead change with a another technical ride with a Tom Carroll bottom turn to late turn under the lip and that was the heat. It should have been closer but it was another brutally efficient win to Medina. 

Wilson packed close-outs with the best of the psychos- there were markers being laid down here that were far more significant than heat wins. Lines in the sand everywhere as to who would go and who would go missing. Julian did not go missing. One clean Backdoor make was enough to dispatch a hapless Miggy Poops. 

Last heat of the day. Kelly v Filipe in backlit 10-foot Pipe. Please allow me to detail the Kings rides as they occurred. It’s unusual, but the performance deserves a permanent record. 

Wave1: Straight off the bat, cute little snap into tube at Pipe. Make. 

Wave2: Non-make Pipe.

Wave3: Backdoor, non-make.

Wave4: Pipe, non-make.

Wave5: Pipe. Clean make. Up under a pitching section. Vertical slash. 6.93.

Wave 6: Heavy Pipe wave. Chopes style high-line. Non-make.

Wave 7: Deep tube Pipe. Fell off in tube, regathered board, stood back up in tube and came out with arms up. Miracle ride. Non-make by judges.

Wave8: (Final Ride) Perfect Backdoor tube on a bomb. Came out after spit. Best wave of the day. 8.67.

Filipe, on the wave behind and needing a close to perfect score, threaded a deep, long Backdoor tube that would have been a ten. Non-make. 

Each of Kelly’s rides I took as personal rebuke, as kick in the nuts. They made me feel churlish, mean and small and simultaneously exalted.

They called to mind Rilke’s famous last lines from his poem Torso of an Archaic Apollo: “Nor would this star have shaken the shackles off, bursting with light, until there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life”.

You? How did you react to the Kings performance?