Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay The Great Leap Forwards

In: Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay by Steve Shearer 12 Comments Thu 14th Jul '11

Tags: jeffreys bay , kelly slater , dane reynolds , lost interest , asp , contest surfing , The Outsider

What do you know about tweetle beetles?
Well...
When tweetle beetles fight, it's called a
tweetle beetle battle.
From Fox in Sox by Dr Seuss.

What was the highlight of Brazil? No, not that. The highlight. Thassright, Slater's massive full-rote Alley Oop was the only leap forwards in Brazil, and that happened well before the event started.

In the same sense, a hall of fame swell currently thundering at Cloudbreak with ginormous blue tubes, featuring the ten-time champ is already stealing precious oxygen from the J-Bay event and depriving the ASP of the tourniquet it so badly needs as the tour gushes credibility like blood from a shark attack wound.

Meanwhile, the best surfer in the world pulls out without any good reason while releasing a short movie called Lost Interest on the eve of the event.

Lost interest? What the fuck is going on?

Where is this going to end?

Your humble correspondent suggested at the start of the year the tour could descend into low farce in 2011, as Slater treated the tour like his personal plaything; to be picked up and fondled at his discretion or dropped like an out of fashion supermodel. The Messiah's ambivalence is also forcing change upon the Pro Surfing landscape.

But some deeper and more fundamental change is happening here. It's like we are almost witnessing a defacto Rebel Tour, with the chief proponents, and we will name and shame them in due course, using the benefits of modern technology to put their case forwards in the court of public opinion.

Josh Kerr and Julian Wilson dropped clips from Bali which blew minds. Dane's latest venture, Lost Interest, both made a mockery of the knee injury claims and solidified his rep as the best in the world. Slater utilised Twitter to organise spontaneous surf comps at Trestles, as well as battling Jamie O'Brien for intellectual supremacy. In what seems like a heartbeat the best surfing in the world has been removed from the domain of the ASP professional contest. It's a staggering contrast to last year, when the efforts of the Messiah, Jordy, Parko, Slater et al seemed to lay waste to the tight-jeaned, beanie-clad dilettantism of the Mod Coll B-listers.

I spoke to Slater in the days just after Brazil, after busting my figs to get his e-mail and phone number. He was expansive and candid: Brazil was an embarrassment; the judges should've conceded an error in relation to the Owen/De Souza heat. He personally felt "discouraged" by the level of surfing on display. I asked him if, considering the standard of surfing in Brazil and the current direction towards big city beachbreaks, he thought the credibility of the sport was threatened.

"Look, those waves were hard to surf. I'd love to see G-Land happen. I think every surf fan on Earth would tune into that live. We have the technology, let's use it. Let's put the guys who have spent their whole lives reaching this performance plateau into waves that show their performance levels."

"What about a Rebel Tour Kelly, is that dead and buried?"

He laughed, "You know, there's too much fear in the surfers. It's their livelihoods and sponsors build their contracts on their tour placing. Thats a hard pill to swallow unless there's some kind of profit share. There is some scope, I think, for the ASP to have, say, four majors with just the Top 16 at the premier breaks".

Well, that makes sense. The other thing that makes sense is a more spontaneous contest structure which more closely mirrors the reality of the modern day pro. In the two months the tour has just had off there have been several major swell events in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. I'm hypothesising here sports fans, but is it so hard to imagine a post-retirement Slater - maybe with a tastefully designed hair piece - getting on Twitter and tweeting a contest at Island X in the Pacific? A mobile Search event if you will, webcast in real time. It can't be that far-fetched because it's happening as we speak.

Old Baldy is doing it right now.

Of course, the sport is only one golden contest away from erasing all this talk, but for now, it seems to be engulfed by changes it can't seem to comprehend, let alone respond to in any meaningful way.

And as for my own coverage of J-Bay? Well just like Old Baldy I scoped the forecast and decided the North Coast Points, which have been off chops lately, were better suited to my tastes. Like Dane, I shall be reclined on a couch, with a well stocked beer fridge handy, and a specially trained beer midget ready to hand me a beer at a click of the fingers. I shall watch every heat and dictate my thoughts to the midget, who shall scribe them on a new Apple computer. Like Slater, like Dane, I am merely rolling with the new Technology.

Anyhoo, J-Bay was a gurgled out two foot today, so this will have to suffice for the opening stanza of the coverage. Enjoy your morning java sports fans. And the beat goes on.

PS: I made the bit up about the midget.