The Ranch was a breakfast special over the last two days; a shimmering blue accompaniment to my morning coffee. Was it just me, or had the pool been given a technicolour make over by someone like James Cameron, the director who ensured ‘Avatar’ had all that big screen bling? The water was so sparkly and blue I expected to see unicorns and mermaids frolicking in the shallows. Although a shark or big croc’ might have made things more interesting. Either way, the brown-water barrels of the Ranch’s debut were a distant memory.
Whilst moving house I was happy to sip on the odd heat at The Ranch, which proved to be a welcome distraction from stacking boxes and figuring out what made the cut or went the way of Mary Kondo.
Yes, all the beach carpark banter had been anti-pool in the lead up to the event. Even Kelly made a live admission that he was well aware that a snowstorm of online negativity was descending on sunny Lemoore. ‘We see all the comments,’ Kelly said point blank to the camera after going over the handle-bars in one of his heats. He sounded a little like a kid who was worried no one was going to have a good time at his birthday party. However, Kelly is also a realist and understood he had a hard time winning over fans who were being invited to look into his backyard but would probably never get to play in it.
Kelly would have been disappointed in his own performance. There are always high expectations from himself and fans given he created the thing. However, to his credit he bounced back from his losses and leapt into the commentary box where he delivered his typically astute commentary, which includes the constructive critiques other talking heads are sometimes afraid to make.
Maybe the Surf Ranch Pro wasn’t an event you set aside your entire Sunday for or took a day off work to watch, but it certainly felt like an improvement on past pool parties. The post-cut decrease in numbers allowed the WSL to play with the format and give the whole event more of a Surfer Vs Surfer feel – which it desperately needed. The Qualifying heats only featured four competitors so your short-term memory could still make a comparison between surfers one and four and there was still stare-down grit in the match-ups.
Then there was the night surfing. Losers banished to the stadium-lit darkness for an eye-straining battle with fuzzy lips. ‘Juiced up’ fans screaming from the walls after a day of drinking in the sun. The nearest cousin to this contest was a day-night cricket match. The WSL letting things get a little rowdy whilst making a few bucks on ticket sales. It’s true this felt much more like a traditional sporting event than any other surf contest we’ve ever seen.
The night ride certainly helped compress the event window, offering only one surfer from the women’s round and two surfers from the men’s round the opportunity to progress. For mine it also provided the most dazzling ride of the contest. Caitlin Simmers hurling her pliable frame at the lip, grabbing rail through gouges, airdropping into the pit and tossing pop shove-its on end sections. The full range of manoeuvres was on display and you never quite knew what Caitlin was going to throw down next. Carissa may have been the most consistent competitor of the event and a deserving victor, but Caitlin felt like the surfer most likely to enthral at The Ranch. Meanwhile, Italo and Grif’ found their night vision and neatly backdoored their way back into the event.
By finals day there was talk of athlete fatigue and lactic-filled legs. Exercise bikes on set to peddle out the stiffness and sports massage experts with fingers ready to knead Italo’s thunderous quads. Pass the Dencorub, hand me some electrolytes and ‘Fire up!’ this was ‘Sport’. The athletes pushed on while the fans, well, got back on the piss. Just like the baseball, the football and the basketball. It felt like that’s where we were being taken.
In the men’s division it was the biomechanics mastery of Ethan Ewing matched against the frenetic flair of the Brazilians. Perfect lines and panache vs high-powered trickery. Ewing added a little progression of his own to bypass event favourite Gabriel Medina, whose pool performance may have slipped a notch since his last freshwater dip. However, in his mind both he and his Brazilian brethren were clearly the victims of a movement against progressive surfing, as was made evident by a missive he fired at the WSL shortly after the event. This is a sample. ” Dear WSL… It is quite clear that judging is now rewarding very simple surfing, seamless transitions and have taken critical turns in critical sections off the criteria. This is very frustrating and is stagnating the sport.”
The judges certainly weren’t discriminating against Yago Dora when he produced a stunning 9.37 in the opening round. However, despite posting the highest wave score of the men’s event, Yago Dora couldn’t get past Griffin Colapinto who had apparently overcome a crisis of confidence after a little counselling from Mr Fix It, Tommy Whittaker.
Ethan’s chlorine quest was eventually halted by a chain-wearing Italo, who bounced around the pool deck like he’d had a breakfast of black coffee with a redbull chaser (I think that’s what he did have). In a famous line from ‘Enter the Dragon’ Bruce Lee said, ‘We need emotional content’ and Italo delivers it in spades, with a vibe that’s often more UFC than WSL. You can’t fault his passion and it was enough to overwhelm Ethan who did well in an event that has always favoured those with airs on quick dial.
In the final, Grif kept his cool, surfed more critically than Italo (whose approach was a little more lateral) and did enough with the progressive elements to climb the winner’s podium and snag the yellow jersey. It’s not easy to come up with similes for snap but Pete Mel added a new word to the surfing lexicon as Grif ‘zephyred’ off the lip. Perhaps from here Grif will ‘Fly away on my zephyr’ as the Chilli Peppers once famously sung. He certainly deserves the number one slot and is arguably doing the best all-round surfing on tour right now. However, he can be mentally fragile and it’s going to be interesting to see how he copes with being in front as the tour heads to El Salvador where he won with a buzzer-beater against Filipe last year.
Carissa Moore wears yellow after a stellar performance that also saw her claim the highest single score of the event in addition to the win. Caroline Marks’ finals berth fully validates her comeback and at number four in the world she is definitely looming as a major title threat. Marks was a bead of wax away from completing a steezy rotation that may have seen here reverse the result against Carissa.
A victory in one of the upcoming events would give her the boost she needs to bolster her self-belief going the finals.
As for The Ranch? It certainly was a major upgrade from past pool parties. However, as fans we are attuned to watching a surfer’s response to an ever-changing variable – the wave. It’s two-dimensional. At The Ranch, no matter how much the commentators dwell on the dreaminess we stop watching the wave because it is a constant-like a skate ramp. That leaves only the surfing to focus on. The technique and the approach can be more heavily scrutinised and the flaws are more readily exposed, but it takes a different kind of headspace to fully appreciate. On a practical/commercial level The Ranch allows the WSL to lock in definite time slots for ad sales and sell tickets to fans, but it will be interesting to see if they stick with it on the CT or if it’s Lemoore no more. Me thinks it’s here to stay, otherwise the WSL will have to figure out another way to make a return on their inland investment. Any backyard pool always seems like a great idea when you lay down the cash for it, but it’s a lot of money and time on cleaning if no one’s swimming.
Finals Day Results
Men’s Final
Griffin Colapinto – 17.77
Italo Ferreira – 17.13
Women’s Final
Carissa Moore – 16.53
Caroline Marks – 14.43
Men’s Semi Final
Heat 1
Griffin Colapinto – 15.60
Filipe Toledo
Heat 2
Italo Ferreira – 16.60
Ethan Ewing -16.36
Women’s Semi Final
Heat 1
Caroline Marks – 15.53
Caitlin Simmers – 15.00
Heat 2
Carissa Moore – 18.00
Tatiana Weston-Webb – 14.77
Men’s Quarterfinal
Heat 1
Griffin Colapinto – 14.67
Yago Dora – 9.43
Heat 2
Filipe Toledo – 17.20
Leonardo Fioravanti – 9.43
Heat 3
Ethan Ewing – 16.67 (Ewing had the highest individual score)*
Gabriel Medina – 16.67
Heat 4
Italo Ferreira – 17.27
Joao Chianca – 8.33
