"Like yoga blocks for your board!"

Entrepreneurship is the gasoline upon which economies run.

Folk get employed. Other folk get employed.

Lots of folk get employed and our world gets better as pesky animals go extinct, leaving us more room to entrepreneur.

And would you allow me to introduce the Surf Knob that is apparently endorsed by Kolohe Andino, Jordy Smith, Joel Parkinson and Gabriel Medina.

It will change your surfing life like it changed theirs and put the vacquita extinct allowing more room in the ocean for our pop ups.

Examine here!

And Pip Toledo and Kelly Slater quarter-final exceeds the insane hype!

Japan steals California’s first CT event victory in ten years at Keramas when 21-year-old Igarashi Kanoa from Huntington Beach wins the Bali Protected pro in perfect four-to-six-foot surf.

Steph Gilmore wins her 30th (!) event in a totally dominant display that would have won the men’s final.

Kelly Slater makes the whole world forget about climate change and the extinction crisis by defeating Filipe Toledo in a quarter-final that, for the first time in the history of pro surfing, totally eclipsed the hype.

It took a while to warm up.

Seemed during an uneventful last women’s QF and the first two men’s QF’s that the WSL had again, like they did at D-Bah, tried to squeeze too much into the event window. Two entire CT events, a mens and a womens and an airshow as well.

Just like he did at Bells, though, KP managed to find a golden pot at the end of a very long rainbow. It came to fruition in the Kelly-Filipe super heat. Pip was flippant in the pre-heat interview. In mock horror he said about Kelly “Oohh, he’s scary” and that it was good to see him “back on the fire”.

It’s almost insane. Who remembers a single thing from the first two rounds? Nobody!

Just like he did at Bells, though, KP managed to find a golden pot at the end of a very long rainbow. It came to fruition in the Kelly-Filipe super heat. Pip was flippant in the pre-heat interview. In mock horror he said about Kelly “Oohh, he’s scary” and that it was good to see him “back on the fire”.

Too flippant, as it turned out.

Kelly sold him the first wave. A scoreless close-out.

Kelly needed to win the opening exchange, and he did. The roundhouse-cutback-to-foam-rebound would be practically extinct at the elite level if not for Kelly. After the first scoring waves he opened a two-point spread on FT.

Two near makes from Kelly would have been ten-point rides apiece.

Messy, slabby, insanely technical tube rides with styled out roundhouses, Kelly playing matador with angry knuckles of foam, saw him in the lead with 10 to go.

Filipe was looking wobbly.

Pottz accused him of getting sucked into Kelly’s game, trying to out-tube him in a tube-riding duel.

But what choice did he have? What was he going to do, dodge the tube? And walk straight into Kelly’s verbal trap of being the best small-wave surfer ever? Kelly pricked his pride and Filipe’s pride fucked him over.

The sunshine and slabby tubes, the drained-out end section made Keramas look like Soup Bowls, one of Kelly’s favoured haunts.

Pip went over the falls selling Kelly on a lemon. Kelly gave it back to Toledo and he pin-dropped out of the lip of a close-out. With clock pressure and scoreboard pressure mounting there was a failure to communicate from Dickie on the beach to Filipe in the water.

He whistled him off an open face that could have been the score. Toledo looked fragile and confused. The clock ticked down and on the buzzer Filipe caught a wave.

“I saw him take off and thought, what’s he going to do,” said Kelly. Then I heard the board snap.”

Done. Kelly in the semi.

I went to see Momentum Generation last month. Went in a hater and came out all loved-up on Kelly. Meant to ask him something abrasive and ended up thanking him for 27 years of entertainment, joy and inspiration.

God, he brought it today.

We will note at this juncture that judges had held the scoring scale steady and maintained the low ball, and we will note that headroom in surf that was becoming groomed by incoming tide and slack winds was justified.

Kanoa overcame Kolohe with the turn he had perfected all event, the vertical lip punch with a tail drift.
Steph looked silky but very restrained in overcoming a Nikki Van Dyke whose skill set and experience did not look up to the challenge.

Earlier in the event Jez Flores had given the clue to his ultimate motivation.

“Everywhere is so crowded, ” he said. “To get the chance to surf these waves with one other guy is the reason I’m still doing it”.

He began to feast on Balinese tubes like a fat man at a breakfast buffet. Gorging himself until it was almost insulting to M-Rod. Judges had paid the tube all event. They paid it for Jezza. The anger drained out him, visibly.

The trash talking before Kanoa and Kelly’s semi-final had become a little cartoonish, devoid of the genuine psychological barbs Kelly had aimed at Filipe.

I mean, how could you trash talk Kanoa?

What an extraordinary time it all of a sudden seemed. Like Krymov the tank commander felt during the Battle for Stalingrad in Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate it was as if history had left the pages of books and come to life. Kelly caught the opening wave on the hooter and sought and found shade in a clean cabana. Kanoa fell and fell and fell.

One more clean cut and Kelly could have put him in a deep combo. He did not. A very long deep technical tube ended when the cavern collapsed on him.

It was halfway through before Kanoa put a wave on the scoreboard. It was the most critical piece of judging of the contest. All through the contest judges had recalibrated scoring between men and women.

Highballing tail-based fin turns by women if they were well-timed and in the pocket. Chief beneficiary being Brisa Hennesy.

In a flash, they bought the same recalibration to bear on Kanoa’s wave. The turns were weak and fin based but awarded a 7.67.

Kelly flubbed a turn between a double tube for a 7.17 and unable to back down the panel went big again for Kanoa’s second scoring ride.

Winners are grinners.

Kanoa thanked the “People who talked trash about him” in the seconds after he won the comp. There will be no need to go back and analyse turns that, based on the scale so far this year, would have been judged fair.

Jordy Smith, in a righteous universe, would be entitled to drop kick a rabid dog in an alleyway.

The contrast between men’s and women’s surfing which had so far looked acute and almost embarrassing to the detriment of the ladies was suddenly reversed. Steph Gilmore’s opening turns had flow and elegant power and unlike the punch and release of Igarashi were arced all the way back against the grain. She was in cruise control mode, by her own admission, before coming to a conclusion that she wanted an excellent number.

The wave she rode next was adjudged perfect. Go look at it on heat analyzer if you missed it. You won’t get the impact of watching it live. Appreciate the hard tube stall snap and the immense pressure of the final hit which buckled her knee flat to the deck. Best wave of the comp.

A little air wind had puffed up for the final.

You could imagine the damage Filipe would have done to the lineup had he been there. Locked into the new scoring paradigm judges gave a floater and three regulation turns by Kanoa one of the highest scores of the event. I hate that “you can script this” conspiracy thinking but it did seem like objectivity was being torched and sent into the atmosphere.

Jeremy tore into a set wave. It was the best wave of the final.

You could imagine the damage Filipe would have done to the lineup had he been there. Locked into the new scoring paradigm judges gave a floater and three regulation turns by Kanoa one of the highest scores of the event. I hate that “you can script this” conspiracy thinking but it did seem like objectivity was being torched and sent into the atmosphere.

I saw it. Pottz saw it.

Even one judge saw it and gave it a 9.5. A lowball from another meant it sat lower than Kanoa’s 9.1.

When Jeremy went straight on a closeout with 11 minutes to go and handed priority back to Kanoa it was all over.

Twenty one years old. Wow. It feels like Kanoa has been on Tour for ever.

Second in the World. Kelly in the Top Ten. One spot ahead of Gabe Medina. Totally mad.

Kelly is making this year a real pleasure. I feel ashamed for casting aspersions on the credibility of the injury wildcard they gave him.