| 
 The
Hog is living on the sharpest of knife edges at the Pipe Masters. For so many
years, Nathan Hedge has been the iconic Australian surfer - absurdly passionate,
loud , irreverent, courageous and skilled. Not a freak, granted, but a very distinguished
A-grader. And yet he's come to Pipe this year with everything left to do, wondering
just how it was that this season slipped away from him so easily.
Of
all the surfers that need a result here at the last WCT of the year (and it's
a surprisingly high profile group), no one needs to go bigger. Nothing less than
2nd place will do it for him, and 1st would be better.  In
his second round heat, he was nervous energy writ large. Buzzing hyperactively
around the line up with much desperation but little apparent purpose, the normally
upbeat, unflappable Hog had dissolved into a puddle of ineffectiveness. After
the rangy Pipe specialist Aamion Goodwin had clawed his way into and out of a
frothy, sandy but reasonably deep mid-sized pit with a handful of minutes left,
it looked like we we're seeing the collapse of a legend.
We
still may be, but it's not going to happen just yet. As the heat entered its last
90 seconds, one of the better waves of the day, a decent eight footer, focussed
its energy on the deep take off spot and offered a big long, tempting, tapering
left. Aamion and Nathan chased this peak deep, but Aamion's Thorpey style arms
got deeper quicker. But as the beast drew a slab of water off the reef, Aamion
- too, too deep now - saw the way this wave was shaping on end section and pulled
back. This is really the first proper Pipe swell of the year.
As Pipe snoozes through the Hawaiian summer, massive layers of sand build up like
lard in arteries, slowly but thoroughly filling all its crevices and holes. It
takes a couple of serious swells to hoover the joint clean, but until that happens,
this clogged up version of Pipe sculpts some incredibly mutated close outs just
where, in theory, the left should back off into deeper water. It was this section
- the one you have to deal with immediately on exiting the barrel - that seemed
to have spooked Aamion, and he quite sensibly chose not to sacrifice himself.
 But
in this particular heat, the Hog had long since abandoned reason, and by now there
was nothing that he wouldn't have gone. Dropping in very late but managing to
draw a sharp line under the lip, Hedgey found himself in a dark, foamy and rapidly
collapsing cavern, with half a mile of ground to cover. Who knows how these things
work, but it could only be sheer pig-headedness that saw him dig himself an exit.
Three more heats to go. Three more miracles required.
While
Hedgey's joy was uncontainable, we've lost some stalwarts here. Hedgey's Rip Curl
team mate, Darrren O'Rafferty, needed only to make his heat to book his place
for '07. While his two wave score was easily enough to nab second spot and progress,
Raff just didn't see Dean Morrison taking the drop behind him as he threaded a
lovely Backdoor pit. An interference call is a horrible way for a career to finish,
if indeed, that is what happened. Trent Munro was another to
stumble to today, despite a pretty good heat. While he's not gone yet, his survival
depends in which of his chasers pass him, and things are looking more than a little
dicey for him. Still in control of their destiny are Jake
Paterson, Mick Lowe and somewhat surprisingly Northern Beaches playboy and style
guru Luke Stedman. Steds hasn't got the solidest rep, particularly in serious
waves, but he's been a quiet head turner in both his Pipe heats so far. After
a magic start on this year's tour, Luke opted to pass on the QS, his usual qualification
pathway, feeling safe about his chances of getting through the CT's front door.
It was a bad call. A long string of mediocre placings have
left him sitting back in 31st, needing to make one more heat to keep his spot.
Sounds reasonable, but the heat he needs to make also features Kelly, Pancho Sullivan
and Pipe specialist Reef Macintosh. It's not the easiest proposition - if Steds
does make it, there'll be no quibbling about his ability to deal with pressure.
Fighting it out with the Aussies for the last few spaces are
Pancho, Chris Ward and Peterson Rosa, and for all of them, every position they
improve their result by is critical. Pancho's Pipe skills are beyond reproach,
and Wardo pretty decent as well. They'll make it really tough for all. Also
making it tough are the brace of Pipe specialists playing the spoiler role. We
could argue all day about the rights and wrongs of having 16 wildcards running
interference as the battling CT'ers fight for their professional life, but there's
no denying that they're paying more than a bit part. There are 32 surfers left
here and 13 of them are wildcards. An all wildcard final would not be at all surprising.
It's highly unlikely that more than a couple of them could survive on the tour,
but surfing Pipe is almost a different sport to surfing, say, Brazil. At Pipe,
where it's about picking the right line through the right wave, local expertise
means way more than raw surfing talent, there's few better than this crew. Meanwhile,
our bottom ranked WQS qualifiers are seeing their chances evaporate. David Weare
contributed to his own downfall when he knocked out Victor Ribas, whose success
was integral to Davey progressing. Troy Brooks' fourth place in round one was
the final nail, closing an unhappy rookie season for the talented South African.
Luke Munro also had a chance here if everything fell right
for him, but they haven't. He still has a faint hope if somehow Victor Ribas can
hang on to the 27th spot, but that is looking very unlikely. After going so close
to progressing at Sunset, he'll be bitterly disappointed, but he will go into
'07 as the first injury alternate on the CT, and some years that has meant a full
season. We've got probably two days of competition left. Most
likely scenario is that round 3 runs Thursday morning our time as a new WNW swell
rises around midday, and we complete quarters through to finals on Friday. It
will be, as it always is, spectacular viewing. | 
