“He knows things I don’t know," says Kelly Slater. "He knows things that all the guys I’m surfing with don’t know.”

In this twelve-minute short, we find Mason Ho, with camera, recording the sorcery of Maui’s Clay Marzo at Desert Point on the island of Lombok in Indonesia.

Of Marzo, Slater says, “He knows things I don’t know. He knows things that all the guys I’m surfing with don’t know.”

Laird Hamilton, also from Maui, calls Marzo “an artist who can’t be pigeon-holed. He’s something all together different that should be cherished.”

It’s a penetrating glimpse into Marzos’s virtuosity and in stark contrast to Ho’s “shuck and jive” style of surfing, a whooshing flash that leaves spectators’ mouths flapping mutely.

Seven years ago, Marzo and his mama were stiffed for $400,000 by their crooked bookkeeper, who would serve three years for the crime.

Essential.

"The question must be asked again and again. Why bother with the WSL?"

John John Florence is better than every other other horned-up lunkhead on tour.

The almost thirty one year old from Pipeline on Hawaii’s North Shore is living proof of the adage simplicity is the ultimate sophistication as he shepherds his family of four, two brothers, mammy Alex and wife Lauren, around the horn of southern Africa.

In these sublime twelve-minutes, Florence’s elegance and grace, as well as his well-noted mystery, radiate from the screen. There is no look-at-me grab for attention, only a sensuality that delivers desirability and vitality in spades.

As noted two weeks ago, the video studiously avoids mention of the Jeffreys Bay Pro where the two-time world champ was controversially clipped by Conner O’Leary for a ninth place finish, again a hint that he may not return to the tour in 2024.

“In John John’s case, there’s nothing left on the tour for him,” wrote Surfads. “And with every underscore, every mistimed comp window, every title decided at 4 foot Trestles, with his little brother and the world slab tour beckoning, with the carrot of Olympic qualification dangling for a only a couple more months… the question must be asked again and again. Why bother with the WSL?”

Matahi Drollet and Eimeo Czermak rain 10s at the Tahiti Pro Trials in the best heat at Teahupoo since Kelly Slater and John John Florence in 2014…

It’s fitting in this post-truth epoch, where Asians are white supremacists, men dominate women’s sport and marauding gangs festooned in gold chains loot Louis Vuitton stores in the name of equity, that the reigning world champion surfer can’t surf the tour’s most demanding waves, Teahupoo and Pipeline.

In three days, the world’s Championship Tour surfers will park ‘emselves at Tahiti’s End of the Road, the closest access point to Teahupoo, and compete in an event that is likely doomed to run in poor conditions. It’s a scenario tailor-made for world champion Toledo, who is wildly difficult to beat in waves under six feet, but a walk-through at Teahupoo and Pipeline when eight-foot sets stack on the horizon.

The trials, however, are something else.

With one wildcard on offer and in six-to-eight-foot waves wiped smooth by light northerly winds, the two local surfers Matahi Drollet and Eimeo Czermak put on a show unseen at the waves since Kelly Slater and John John Florence’s epic semi in 2014.

With less than ten minutes gone, Drollet, 25, a man who won the XXL award for biggest wave ridden in 2015 when he was only 16, slouches into a 9.50 followed by a ten.

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Czermak, a boy with golden highlights in strawberry blond hair, the ginger snaps floating in freckled white skin, delivers his riposte, an 8.17 then his own ten.

Needing a 9.61 he roams the park, pulling into wild west bowls, futilely as it turns out.

Watch the full final here.