{all pictures and text taken from SurfLine}
After a ridiculously exciting day of surfing yesterday, the final day of the waiting period kicked off with a sparkle. The winds were light offshore, there was a healthy morning crowd and three-to-four foot dream runners, grinding down the bank. Everything seemed rosy. Everything seemed like we were in for an epic final showdown. That was until the, "reverse-rip," the commentators have been talking about plagued the lineup. It was a game changer. Things became tricky.
More on that in a bit.
Right now, Matt Wilkinson holds the title as the best (competition) backhand surfer on the planet. He's certainly the most unorthodox, rollerblading to the contest scene on a pair of recently purchased
blades from a thrift store. It just makes us love him even more.
Unfortunately Wilko pushed his backhand too hard, going down to Tiago Pires in the quarters. "I was wiggin' out, trying to do little, weird turns... I was surfing like an idiot," Wilko said. "I fell over for no reason on, like, ten waves. Dumb! I've been talking about surfing smart heats all week -- I just put my foot in my mouth."
In Jordy Smith's quarterfinal heat, he'd caught 13 waves and only posted two low scores, which left him trailing. In ASP World Tour competition, you're only allowed 15 waves per heat, so he had two waves left to get "the" score. He absolutely polished his 14th wave all the way down the line. He needed a mid-seven and got a high seven. This
was in the dying minutes. "It took me 14 waves to get it, but I finally got one," Smith said. "I kept taking off on waves to get an opportunity. If you give yourself enough opportunities it's eventually going to turn around. I got lucky in the end."
So back to the reverse rip. There's a lot of factors which contribute to this phenomenon. You'd need all sorts of PhD's in nearshore wave movement to have the street cred to accurately explain it. In a nutshell -- the swell clocked around more to the east changing the currents in the bay, the tide was very low leaving the sand along the point high and dry so there was no place for water to move up the point other than through the wave zone. Kelly even opted to paddle back out to the takeoff zone rather than request ski-assist. Whatever the phenom, it proved a headache for them in the final.
"Taj and I both made a couple of errors in the final. He fell on one I fell on two," said Kelly. "I think we both had higher expectations in our minds of what the waves were going to be like... that probably messed with us.
"In situations like that, you get down to the final and you want to be able to have a battle going back and fourth, not worrying about priority and things like that," said Kelly. "You want to both be getting
waves in every set and just lighting it up for the crowd... and may the best man win."
Taj did everything he could in the situation, but after a standout run through the event, there was no back-to-back Quip Pro win. "Bummer the waves didn't hang in there," said Burrow. "It was really sloppy in the end -- I was blown away I couldn't even better a three."
It came down to two average waves Kelly rode, which weren't special. Taj had been posting nines all the way through the event, but lost to Kelly who won with two fives. Both men struggled in the tricky conditions. Regardless of wave quality for the final, as Kelly put it, "everybody loves this event and all the surfers really love this event because the waves are so fun."
