Pre-final, the roaming WSL cameramen revealed the yellow Jeep Leader Jersey sporting Jordy Smith doing the Stevie Wonder head wobble in a pair of over-sized headphones, flanked by pops and coach Gally. Was he listening to that track he recorded years ago? He obviously already had his game plan sorted, but perhaps he should have been paying closer attention to ocean rhythms. Meanwhile Toledo was tuned in to the dazzling performance of Silvana Lima in the women’s final and feeding off the frenetic, winning energy off his compatriot.
Lima was still pumping her biceps atop the human chair as Toledo and Jordy paddled out into an oily-slick Trestles lineup. Pottz was dubbing it a ‘David and Goliath’ battle. In truth, the Trestles lineup was the real opponent. Waves were scarcer than an unclaimed, dry cobblestone and the fickle conditions inspired two dramatically different strategies.
After almost five minutes of painstaking flatness, Filipe grabbed a wave and hucked a steezey, frontside air reverse with his very first move. It only earned him a 4.67 but it achieved two key things. It ensured there would be no heat re-start and made it clear to the judges that if Jordy was going to stay grounded (as he had for much of the comp) Filipe could bring another dimension with his light-footed jumps.
While Joe and Pottz improvised as Trestles tour guides and surf historians to fill the dead air, Filipe made it apparent he was going to catch anything that rippled across the glassy surface. Meanwhile, Jordy looked like a grown man, sitting on a pool pony waiting for Shawn Briley and big Jimbo Pelligrene to throw a bomb so he could catch the wake.
After frantically hunting down a couple of mid-rangers, Filipe posted his first score of substance with just under nineteen minutes remaining. Relying on local knowledge (he lives in San Clemente and calls Trestles his homebreak these days) to snaffle a dot-connecter left, Toledo demonstrated his versatility by linking multiple backside blasts. It was surfing straight from the 80s, small wave handbook, but in a final bereft of waves it was enough to earn Fil eight points.
His second decisive wave came shortly after, a whitewater right roll in, again under the priority of Jordy. Perhaps he was just feeling playful or maybe he genuinely thought he’d discovered a new way to get points for variety, but mid-way through a drifting floater, Filipe kicked his back foot off the board and momentarily rode with only his left toes gripping the wax. Not since Michel Bourez buried a hoof in the barrel while pig-dogging at Fiji has a footloose move caused such a stir. Truth be told it was probably the silky, air reverse finish that nudged the score up into the near-excellent range ( 7.67), but Filipe’s improvised moment of ‘tap dancing on the awkward dance floor’ as Turps called it, had a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ about it. It proved that despite the high pressure setting, Filipe still had the presence of mind to mix entertainment with trophy-grabbing ambition.
However, seconds after Toledo’s ‘look at me’ wiggle of the toes, Jordy was kicking in the door on the best wave of the heat. Straight-talking Barton Lynch thought Jordy held back by ‘tapping’ the lip with his first two turns, but the judges wanted to see a heat and rewarded Jordy with a nine.
Suddenly it was game on. Jordy, the patient predator now only needed a 6.67 to catch the Brazilian gazelle and he had more than fourteen minutes to make the kill. Soon after, Toledo rode another crowd-pleasing, but inconsequential wave and then Trestles decided it would do its best imitation of a duck pond for ten minutes. While Turps and Pottz quacked, a frustrated Jordy and hundreds of thousands of viewers waited for a lump that was never destined to arrive. A Brazilian curse had been cast on the lineup and all Jordy could manage was a feeble, white-water climb in the dying seconds.
Would the result have been different if there had been a few more waves in the back end? That’s all hypothetical foolery because ultimately Filipe had chosen the best strategy for the given conditions and it had paid off.
Post-final a cool-headed Filipe told Rosy Hodge that he’d been clear about his tactics the whole time. “I noticed the sets were super slow. So I went for that strategy.”
Most revealing was Filipe’s confident response to questions about his world title ambitions. There was no pre-prepared ‘one heat at a time’ sheepishness. Instead Filipe looked straight down the barrel and stated, “It’s definitely my main goal and it feels good to be the only guy that won two events this year… It’s going to be crazy to go down to the last event, but I’ll be there.”
If it does indeed come down to a Pipe Masters showdown with Toledo in contention, he will have to bury the demons of 2015 where he couldn’t summon a 2.27 in round three at Pipe to overcome Mason Ho and stay in contention for the world title. While his performance surfing is now an almost perfect symphony of wet rails and sun-tickling airs, he’s still yet to prove he can perform in waves of real consequence.
However, there is still plenty of action to unfold before the tour shows up on the North Shore. Toledo will be intent on making up as much ground in the two-contest, European leg as he can. The mathematicians are no doubt busy looking at the scenarios right now, but it’s clear that Jordy and John John remain the two front-runners in the race with Julian Wilson still Australia’s best hope.
As for who owns today though, Filipe Toledo said it best.
“This is Brazil. Me and Sylvana.”
