“It’d be like a golf major where every hole is a pitching wedge to a par three. The same par three.”
In Aussie media circles, right-leaning masthead The Australian plays a role not unlike the drunken great uncle at an extended family barbeque.
Obstinate. Incorrigible. Loud-mouthed. Untucked shirt smeared with chicken grease and sherry. Hopelessly out of touch with social norms and trends. A true dinosaur.
Yet still equipped with the uncanny ability, every now and then, for hitting the nail squarely on the head when it comes to topics of taboo.
“And they wonder why you never amounted to anything…”
Read fervently by politicians and powerbrokers, The Oz is an agenda setter whether you agree with its politics or not. A sometime home to former Stab journo Fred Pawle. But not the sort of place usually concerned with the trivialities of surfing.
“The waves resemble the dream little tubes that run across Rainbow Bay on a good day and yet time has revealed them to be lacking the million oceanic miracles that fire the imagination, get the blood pumping and stir the soul. It’s been fake news all along, and now the giant concrete basin is hosting the most boring surfing event in the world.”
Until last week.
In a withering critique titled “The Most Boring Surf Contest in the World” award-winning sports journalist Will Swanton unequivocally eviscerates the offering put to us by the World Surf League.
All behind a paywall unfortunately.
But jeez there was some verified zingers, reproduced lovingly here:
“The waves resemble the dream little tubes that run across Rainbow Bay on a good day and yet time has revealed them to be lacking the million oceanic miracles that fire the imagination, get the blood pumping and stir the soul. It’s been fake news all along, and now the giant concrete basin is hosting the most boring surfing event in the world.”
On Stephanie Gilmore:
“She looked down, which real surfing never entails. There was no point in casting an eagle eye out and about. Gilmore knew when the wave was coming, and she knew exactly what it would look like, and she knew exactly what it would do. She exhaled, looking bored, and then tapped her board impatiently.”
He concludes:
“It’d be like a golf major where every hole is a pitching wedge to a par three. The same par three.”
Ooft.
Any publicity is good publicity, as they say, except when it isn’t.
I don’t need to expend any more words on how the competition format is boring. Disjointed. Stifling performance and innovation.
It’s been done to death in the surfing world already.
But having a journalist the calibre of Swanton taking a swing at the Surf Ranch in a mainstream rag like the Oz ain’t a good look for anybody concerned.
How many more stinging barbs will it take for the WSL to take Lemoore off the tour?
Or at least fundamentally re-jig the format so that it offers up something more than the mind-numbing repetition we’ve been so sadistically subjected to?
Or will they continue unfazed, munching contently on their green leaf salad, not realising the BBQ is over and only the drunken great uncles remain?