The winds of change, they be blowing.
Strange, hot winds blowing in strong from the piss-warm West Pacific, ruffling the locks of Jordy Smith, who’s standing at the water’s edge at Snapper Rocks looking like he’s walked straight out of a shampoo commercial. Was his hair that luxurious last time we saw him? I don’t know. It seems so long ago now since we lost him to injury, but I remember a faint wispiness about his hairline, a line of soldiers grimly holding formation in front of an advancing enemy. And yet here he was, his hair reinvigorated, standing there like a lion. Was his hair a metaphor for his surfing? It was regal, but I still wished he’d turned up with Mikey Wright’s hair. If you’re going to make a statement, don’t do it by half.
After watching on for the past six months, you can’t help but sense that pro surfing is in the middle of an El Niño-led recovery.
The tour has come in hot from a Hawaiian winter that featured a dramatic World Title showdown followed on with a series of colossal swells, all broadcast live to a nodding public. You get the feeling it’s actually kinda working. You can feel the tide rising and pro surfing’s new owners are finally getting some wins on the board. You feeling it? Strider Wasilewski certainly is. He skateboarded past this morning – seemingly without a skateboard – down Greenmount Hill, throwing shakas before almost going under the wheels of a hotted-up Nissan driven by a teenager wearing speed-dealer sunglasses.
The benevolent Pacific that has revived the fortunes of pro surfing, however, looks set to toy royally with this event.
Sitting on a boulder watching the waves at Snapper this morning, it was hard not to think, what if? This was mushy baby food compared to the Rick Griffin masterpiece that was Snapper two weeks ago, waves that hissed and fizzed and tubed for as far as the eye could see, impossibly perfect waves, and waves that would have arrived smack-bang in the middle of the waiting period… if they hadn’t pushed it back two weeks. A day late, a buck short. So it goes.
There is salvation late in the forecast window and some decent tradewind swell until then, but while the bank has largely survived, we need to prepare ourselves for the frightening realization that nobody will be barreled during this event. The top of the sandbank is gone – now currently residing somewhere on Fraser Island – and while the guy working the sand pump is doing double-time-and-a-half, it won’t change the fact that this contest will be won on turns.
Sacrilegious, I know.
And so the with Snapper lineup apocalyptically clear and your correspondent sweating in the Queensland heat like a bishop who knows too much, the first shot of 2016 was fired in anger by Italo Ferreira, who unlike last year I actually recognized on Day One of the season, sporting a brand new sticker and a pair of stuck-on sideburns for flourish. It was a little early in the season for making bold calls (20 minutes), but at that point, I believed deeply that Italo Ferreira will be World Champion this year. The sideburns alone will surely be enough to get him over the line.
A surfer with little need of PR at this event is Phil Toledo.
Having caught everyone off guard here at Snapper last year by tearing the Tour a collective new ass on his way to winning the event, this time we were all ready and waiting. This was clear on his first wave when he produced a flattish forehand air reverse and the broadcast reacted like it was 1993. By Phil’s standards it was a snoozer, and thankfully the judges saw reason. He’ll undoubtedly scramble our tiny minds at some stage this week, but let’s keep it cool until then.
It was a little early in the season for making bold calls (20 minutes), but at that point, I believed deeply that Italo Ferreira will be World Champion this year. The sideburns alone will surely be enough to get him over the line.
What was refreshing today was actually having a bonafide crop of Tour rookies on deck, rather than simply rolling out six recycled journeymen for the 53rd year in succession, a system devised back when the surfers effectively ran the Tour. This field of rookies created unlikely – yet compelling – matchups. Watching Kelly, Wilko and Conner Coffin surfing out there together today was like having Ghengis Khan, Buttons Kaluhiokalani and Morrissey turn up to your house for dinner. Here were three divergent characters with three distinct styles, and they duked out an entertaining heat. Kelly looked loose in the top third of the wave, while Conner needed the rare top-to-bottom waves to flare. Conner immediately looked at home. All the rookies did. They’ll be a rat pack this year. Even Mikey Wright, in the event as Quiksilver’s wildcard, managed to beat World Champ De Souza by surfing like AC/DC play rock.
For the record, last week I tipped Wilko to win the contest.
As soon as the bank moves down the point here at Snapper something magical happens: You actually realize there are goofyfooters in the event! The only two goofy wins have both been down the point, and it’s going to be a down-the-point kinda year.
Wilko is a gem. It’s like this whole pro surfing thing just happens around him and he just walks around seemingly oblivious to it, but then somewhere during the year you’ll flash on him during a heat – a whole heat, sometimes just one wave, often a single turn and always on his backhand – and you’ll see potentially the best surfer on earth…before he goes and does something silly again. But Wilko has spent the entire summer down there at Broken Head surfing a bank that looks not dissimilar to the one we’re surfing here, and if he got loose down the point here this week, well…if we want change, there’d be no bigger change than Wilko winning Snapper.