princess margaret river pro

[Beanpole]

Highlight so far (besides the huge day )was the visible aggro between Carissa and Sally
Need some of that spice in the men's

Yep. That was some icy shit right there. I loved it.

yes, a cat fight between the veterans would be great.
"You bitch, Kelly."
"You're such a skank, Mick."

[Beerfan]

Still going? We just need bill Lawry to chime in with "it's all happening here"

[offshore1]

I really fundamentally disagree with that assessment: that the tour is full of uninteresting people.

In the top 10 you've got the most interesting group of Pros, maybe ever, certainly since the dawning of Pro surfing, notwithstanding Andy Irons.

Care to provide a detail or two to back that statement up Steve?

[JaM71]

I think the WSL tour has been polished and the surfers have to be all corporate and professional at all costs.....or they"ll get bumped off the tour, Bobby Martinez???

The days where the rivalries were on display and everybody clearly didn't get on were much more interesting in a soap opera kinda way. But I suppose the WSL will say the world tour is about surfing and the standard has gone through the roof in recent years and the surfers will say, yeah being nice all the time sucks but look at my bank account. Of course not everyone in the top 34 is a millionaire but there are far more pro surfers making a lot of money than when Potz & Gerr were stabbing each other with their boards mid heat.

[foamy]

Of course, we want people behaving badly so we can feel superior to them and express our smug moral disapprobation on the internet.
Damn those people who kept Andy Irons drug problems a secret!

[julioadler]

When i meant package, i was aiming to the whole circus, not the surfers.

You have a interesting history behind every one of them - even Bede and Ace, well, mostly Bede and Ace...

What you don't have, apparently, is the will to explore that, not from you and me, but from WSL itself, with a bunch of rules and regulations.

Really miss sarcasm from the original aussie surf media.

https://youtu.be/Wn7W-QRGNX8

[Nick Carroll]

1976 top 10:
Peter Townsend
Ian Cairns
Mark Richards
Mark Warren
Michael Tomson
Shaun Tomson
Michael Peterson
Rory Russell
Barry Kanaiaupuni
Michael Ho

1986 top 10
Tom Curren
Tom Carroll
Mark Occhilupo
Gary Elkerton
Martin Potter
Damien Hardman
Hans Hedemann
Glen Winton
Shaun Tomson
Brad Gerlach

1996 top 10
Kelly Slater
Shane Beschen
Sunny Garcia
Luke Egan
Kaipo Jaquias
Taylor Knox
Kalani Robb
Matt Hoy
Jeff Booth
Michael Rommelse

2006 top 10
Kelly Slater
Andy Irons
Mick Fanning
Taj Burrow
Bobby Martinez
Joel Parkinson
Damien Hobgood
Tom Whitaker
Dean Morrison

2016 top 10
John Florence
Jordy Smith
Gabriel Medina
Kolohe Andino
Matt Wilkinson
Michel Bourez
Kelly Slater
Julian Wilson
Joel Parkinson
Filipe Toledo

There's a fair argument for shearer's call I reckon. Look at the diversity in 2016 compared with all the other years. You've gotta discount the many years we have had to get to know more about the surfers earlier in the curve and the way they were more revealed to us by the circumstances back then. This is a fascinating group, this current top 10, but the tour machinery (and the agents, sponsors etc) keeps them pinned on cardboard as far as people getting to know them. They're on show but you only get glimpses of who they are.

[steve shearer]

Medina is a beast, Slater: what is he? What is he becoming? It's horrifying and it's mesmerising; this late stage of his career. New ground, for pro surfing at the least, and a kind of world-historical event for global sport.

Fanning and Parkinson : we see snippets, snippets of snippets of these lives and that in itself is fascinating. Fanning is a kind of cyborg. A cyborg who had his emotional viscera ripped out in public and now what comes back? Parkinson is integrated into the professional world of NRL football with the Titans and runs with a crowd for whom normal rules of society scarcely apply.

Julian Wilson is straight out of a Stendahl novel. "It chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. He ultimately allows his passions to betray him."

on and on and on.

[foamy]

Just 3 heats left for the women and they are talking about running them tomorrow.
Seems strange. Probably best conditions on Sunday with enough time to run all remaining men's and women's heats by lunch time. Is double plus overhead Margs too big for the top female tour surfers?
Not criticising, just wondering.

[steve shearer]

maybe they want "clean air" around the women?

[foamy]

Possibly, but it won't maximise viewers. 3 heats in probably mediocre conditions and it will be over before people realise it's on.

Plus it's the waves that really bring the eyeballs. Sunday would seem to be the day. People tune in to watch the men and stick around to watch the women, and vica versa. Adds to the drama having both mens and womens finals. Maybe the 'clean air' is to protect the women from comparison with the men in sizable surf. Seems a lack of faith in womens surfing. Maybe I'm wrong.

[steve shearer]

not sure they want to maximise viewers, maybe they want to maximise mainstream media coverage. In which case, they double up on the story potential and the womens surfing gets it's own column space.


thats just a theory, but based on my observation of the way womens surfing and womens sport in general is being covered by the mainstream press.

[Davros]

Who the fk is Jeff Booth?

[steve shearer]

californian goofy foot

[Nick Carroll]

Jeff Booth, Laguna Beach, CA. Silky smooth power surfing goofyfoot. Best tour result would have been second place at the first G-land Pro in 1995. Unfortunately better known in some quarters for having penned the epic letter to Surfer and Surfing magazines in 1990. countersigned by a bunch of other pros, complaining about the photo space been given to non tour surfers like Christian Fletcher. The readers turned on him in the first sign of the US surf community's wearying of their love affair with pro surfing. Boothy just rolled on, successful surf industry sales rep etc.

[Yuke Hunt]

A sales booth, interesting.

[BA]

He was in plenty of Quikkie films. Great style.

[channels]

Just 3 heats left for the women and they are talking about running them tomorrow.
Seems strange. Probably best conditions on Sunday with enough time to run all remaining men's and women's heats by lunch time. Is double plus overhead Margs too big for the top female tour surfers?
Not criticising, just wondering.

I'm thinking they might try and run it at The Box on Sunday morning.