"Uncommon weather phenomena on tour."
The weather, amirite? Hurricanes in California, heat waves in Washington, flooding in the Caribbean and zero waves all year on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour. While bloat, poor planning, bad windows, incompetence, falling in love with tourism boards and antiquated event structures could be blamed for the latter, the WSL’s very own Chief Strategist, Dave Prodan, has pointed his wizened finger at another culprit.
Climate change.
Taking to his very popular podcast The Lineup, which acts as a sort of right think propaganda machine for competitive professional surfing at its highest level, Prodan shared with guest Mitch Salazar that “uncommon weather phenomena on tour” led to baby swells during the entire 2023 season.
Dastardly.
But do you think the powers that be will take this into account for next year, paying attention to global warming, cooling, etc. and where waves might be and when or do you imagine that stops one through ten will be moved to Lemoore, California where it is always shoulder high and tubing (stop eleven remaining at Lower Trestles, of course)?
What would Joel Tudor do?