Margaret River Pro, Final’s Day: “John John Florence is both saviour and executioner of the WSL business model!”

"My dream now is that John wraps the Title at J-Bay and boycotts the tub, maybe releases a few clips sailing in the Tuamotus. Treats the Tour the way Kelly used to."

Never feel happier with pro surfing than when John John is winning in six-to-eight-foot surf. The business model as of June 2019 is him, and him alone.

For those of you who have never been to Western Australia, the state of excitement as my mate Diggsy likes to call it, it’s a windy place. Blow a goat off a chain windy.

I used to sit in the Kalbarri pub with my old skipper, day after day, watching the smooth white trunk of the Kalbarri eucalypts bent in half and the bar an impassable washing machine.

“It’s not so easy on the old blue briney,” he’d say.

The other thing: the offshore wind blows weakest just before dawn, so if you wake up and it’s 20 knots at Cape Naturaliste, the northern end of the Margaret river prominence, you know it’s only gunna get stronger. And harder to surf when you’re sitting 500 yards out to sea at Main Break. Great fun on an eight-foot single fin with a triple-six glass job.

Hard, hard work on a six-0.

Tatiana brushed past Sally Fitzgerald with a wave on the buzzer but it was the next heat that threatened to be the heat of the day. Carissa and Lakey went at it with plenty of hustle, not that we ever hear about it or get an insight into the fierceness.

Moore inexplicably gave a wave to Lakey and Lakey dismantled it.

All day it was the second turn that paid the biggest dividends, John proved that later in the event, and Lakey got an incredible whip through it against the grain of the wind. A late exchange went unscored for a long period of time, Peterson repeatedly waving her arms to call for the score.

Dominant win.

When John loses it’s because he falls on the last turn. Ala the loss to Adriano De Souza in 2015, ala the loss in Keramas. He fell on the first three waves he caught against Caio Ibelli despite really connecting with the opening turn of the opening wave.

God, he’s changed. Remember the Machado-like nonchalance? That would never stoop to engage in something as barbaric as a paddle battle? I thought the faux-hawk was bad juju at the start of the year but when he paddled straight over the top of Caio after the opening exchange it finally seemed fully warranted.

God, he’s changed. Remember the Machado-like nonchalance? That would never stoop to engage in something as barbaric as a paddle battle? I thought the faux-hawk was bad juju at the start of the year but when he paddled straight over the top of Caio after the opening exchange it finally seemed fully warranted.

It’s not quite a tragedy to see a nervous John John prepared to win ugly against an opponent with a superior record against him. Not if he wins in the end.

Which he did. He couldn’t close in a shaky, unconvincing performance. Caio was a zombie antagonist who would not die and in the final analysis he’s got grounds to feel a bit ripped.

In the end the judges did the work that John should have done to dispatch Caio.

What to say about the Julian/Kolohe semi. Not much. Both struggled to make any sense of an increasingly wind thrashed lineup. Julian tried to sell a very weak wave as a winning score with a claim even he didn’t look convinced with. Kolohe fell over the finish line with a couple of fives.

Tati never really looked capable of taming a steep section and that very awkward counter rotational upper body style seemed increasingly discontinous with the actual movement of the board through the water. Which is what Joel Parkinson correctly identified as the marker of a good surfboard top turn. Lakey took a lot of punishment and connected with the middle section to win easily.

I thought John’s equipment had looked a bit shakey during the semis. Bald tyres, lack of traction.

Bigger fins needed?

As you know, he elected to ride the same 6’0” Ghost (bee’s dick under 30 litres) in the Final with the same M fins.

Completes the first wave and he’s won the Final, I wrote in my notes.

We were three waves ridden in the Final before the broadcast kicked in.

Kolohe kicked it off with a seven and a four. John calmly finished for a 7.67.

It’s done, I wrote in my notes.

Andino had been talking a big game since the Gold Coast about a power attack that no one had seen and that he claimed was the equal of anyone on Tour. Cruelly, they played the audio grab before the Final began.

Reality delivered a humiliating riposte.

We were watching an interview with Lakey, the live surfing was on a small screen.

I wrote “Johns turns a notch below 2017” as he dropped in with the lip already breaking on his head. His riposte was not just to Kolohe but to the standard he set in 2017. The searing rail-buried-to-the-nose carve with extra rotational torque was there in the middle section of the wave. It was framed with extra variety in the repertoire with turns one and three.

The crux of the technical advantage of the Ghost is the way it breaks from the hydrostatic to the hydrodynamic, as seen in that late take-off. The forwards rocker and rail line engages quicker and more resolutely which means John was at the lip faster, in time, and with more speed. It was almost an unfair advantage.

It was about the easiest nine judges have had since 2017.

The crux of the technical advantage of the Ghost is the way it breaks from the hydrostatic to the hydrodynamic, as seen in that late take-off. The forwards rocker and rail line engages quicker and more resolutely which means John was at the lip faster, in time, and with more speed. It was almost an unfair advantage.

From that point on there were no vital signs left in Kolohe’s Final. It was time to reflect.

John is both saviour and executioner of the WSL business model. Their model has become two-pronged with the departure of Paul Speaker and the failure to find non-endemic sponsorship and broadcast deals.

On the one branch, WSL is building an entertainment company with control, manufacture and distribution of content. John is crucial to that success.

On the other, WSL is balls deep as a licensee and manufacturer of wave pool technology and IP. That dream looks dead in the water.

Do you remember the day it died?

Last year, after the most sustained and brilliant marketing blitz in sporting franchise history the WSL ran the Founders Cup in May. And John Florence, the best surfer in the World, falling and falling and looking at the tub like a fifteen-year-old with maths homework in front of her. It was a wholesale rejection, in body language if not actual speech. All that marketing brilliance made irrelevant in a single gesture.

My dream now is that John wraps the Title at J-Bay and boycotts the tub, maybe releases a few clips sailing in the Tuamotus. Treats the Tour the way Kelly used to.

But we dream too much.

The Final ended about emphatically as could possibly be imagined. John duckdived under Kolohe on a feathering set pushing him out of position and then spun on the next wave and delivered the best surfing of the event.

I never feel happier with pro surfing than when John John is winning in six-to-eight-foot surf. It seems a pay-off for the huge investment in time that pro surfing demands and so rarely delivers on.

The business model as of June 2019 is him, and him alone.