A silence louder than bombs.
Surf jernalizm is a queer calling at the best of times
in the best of circumstances, and I use the word queer in
the oldest of oldest school ways.
Pro surfing jernalizm is an even weirder little corner of the
“content creation” universe to inhabit.
You gots to pay close attention for a meaningful period of time
to something that very few people give a fuck about. You have to
adopt, consciously or unconsciously the edict of famed NFL coach
Vince Lombardi who said, on the subject of football, “You have to
be smart enough to figure it out and dumb enough to think that it
matters”.
Or something like that.
So you forgive old Longtom for being in a state of tumid
excitement for roughly the last month since a haggard and pale ELO
dropped his latest clip with the huge news that a major, major
restructure of the Tour was in the offing.
Pro surfing, as we knew it, was essentially dead and something
almost entirely new was about to emerge from the ashes.
Awesome.
The sport has been ripe for change for years;
really, since the 2011 mid-year cut that brought us both John John
Florence and Gabriel Medina. That process of cutting numbers,
changing the rotations of surfers in and out of the championship
Tour was a beginning, not an end, but surfer dissatisfaction
stopped it dead in its tracks.
ELO promised some more
meat on the bone June 1.
On Hold until June 1, he said.
Great, I’ll be there June 1, stay up all night if I have to, to
watch the unboxing. Four am Aussie time, I got the coffee, the new
pen, the notebooks ready. The WSL website is devoid of
announcement, no video presser of ELO dropping the new Tour in our
lap, or at least a rough sketch with a few more details.
Nothing all day.
Nada.
That’s weird.
What other sport would promise fans a huge shake-up of the Tour
and then just deliver radio silence?
June 2.
Nothing again.
A silence louder than bombs.
What happened to the timeline?
Did ELO forget?
There is a lot going on.
Was the Tour restructure delegated to an intern, maybe the same
one who left on the Corona Bali Open VIP ticket experience despite
the fact Bali is dropped from the Tour this year?
Were they too busy creating new engaging content to film ELO
giving us the lowdown?
I can only speculate.
Not even a leak to a favourable media organisation was
forthcoming.
June 3, seventy-two hours after the promised call about both
this years Tour and the major restructure a simple social media
tile was released.
On hold until early July.
What happened in that three days?
Did they not know?
Were they waiting for something?
For the average gal on the street, no news is good news.
For a global sports governing body, a delayed announcement and
then an even fuzzier promise to update looks kooky. It doesn’t
inspire confidence in the man from Oklahoma. ELO’s made a career
out of the illusion of control, but when you let the narrative twist
in the breeze for three long days that illusion starts looking very
shaky.
So, what now?
Interest drips away.
We wait, I guess.
But can we be honest, amongst pals?
Yes? Good.
Pro surfing has never been an American thing. Never. It’s
sputtered and fizzed out, occasionally flashes of interest light up
the sporting landscape on the back of once in a generation talents
like Curren or Dane, then long periods of torpor or outright
hostility follow.
It’s an Australian thing. Has been since it’s inception, or
since the southern-hemi upstarts stole it off Fred Hemmings and
Randy Rarick, to be more precise.
No offence to my American colleagues but Australians have a
talent and temperament for pro surfing that simply does not exist
in the American soul.
The headquartering of WSL in Los Angeles will one day be
registered as a grand failed experiment, precisely because it’s
antithetical to attracting the best talent, which is
Australian.
Run this thought experiment with me.
Posit a hypothetical, let’s say, Commissioner. Highly talented,
highly intelligent, highly respected. Loves his surfing, loves his
family, loves his quality of life.
Why would this hypothetical talent, who could be a grand bridge
between American capital and the pro surfing fan base relocate to
Los Angeles, when he could live, lets say, on the North Coast of
NSW and enjoy the best of what life has to offer a man of his
talents and proclivities?
Well, he wouldn’t would he.
Which means the WSL doesn’t have the calibre of his intellect in
the room when the blue-sky thinking and implementation is taking
place. The directional pull for global talent is generally
considered to be towards the United States but in this case it’s
the reverse.
You see what I’m saying, right?
ELO’s a great flimflam man.
But he’s not got the skill set, as they say, to restructure the
sport.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks.
Injury, CoronaVirus and now administrative incompetence robs us
of three years of John John Florence mastery.
The greatest Top Ten in the history of the sport languishes
while Global Sport announces plans to get back to work.
Elo, where’s the motherfucking plan at?
