Not the Nine O’clock News
It’s that time of the year again, as the jersey wearers start facing up to the fact that their competitive years are about to start, and that they need to get their asses into gear in order to be in that winning mindset. As everyone starts looking at Snapper, and the shit storm heading for the mile–long sand bottom point, what else has been happening in the world of surf?
Twiggy wins
Don’t want to jinx the fellow, but it does look like Grant ‘Twiggy’ Baker is going to get his third world title by the end of March. Big Wave Tour commissioner Mike Parsons told us here http://www.worldsurfleague.com/posts/375780/commissioner-update-mavericks-challenge that ‘it is unlikely that we will have another swell before the season closes’ which means that the current rankings leader will become the world champion.
Twig is currently in the lead, ahead of Billy Kemper and Kai Lenny, and with a points total of 16,305, he will be the deserving world champion. Twig took out the win at the Nazaré Challenge, and he placed 5th at the Jaws Challenge, and that will be enough to get him to the top of the rankings. So Twig is just playing a waiting game, as the end of the Mavericks window runs out at the end of March. So that’s nine days from today.
Slater loses
The fact that he took to the Vissla Sydney Surf pro with such enthusiasm just goes to show that King Kelly is still just as determined as ever, and the fact that he is eyeing off the Olympics and is reconsidering his retirement next year means that he’s not going anywhere soon. Which is great for the sport of surfing. It’s hard to puzzle over what his plans are, but if he’s deadset keen on competing in the 2020 Olympics then he will compete. It’s that simple, really. He’ll be on the podium as well, as long as he does a bit of extra training in crap surf, like this even at Manly. They’re not going to surf in a wave pool, so he’s going to have to improve his nimbleness in the crap and not get beaten by people like Jesse Mendes and Alex Ribiero
Waco goes solid
The Waco Wave Pool is back, and there are all sorts of superlatives going around at the moment that this new edition of the funnest wave pool out there, now with clean water, is the greatest man-made wave in the world and is going to blow minds when it gets revealed.
While the wave tanks have improved tremendously and the Surf Ranch is one of the most incredible things in the world of surfing, most of the wave pools are incredibly underwhelming. No need to list them all, but they’re generally weak-looking and small. For surfers to shout about an 8-fot peak at Waco is a helluva thing, and if it turns out to be another over-hyped three-foot wave with a little head-dip section, people are going to be over it. All will be revealed soon.
The old Waco was fun but will the new incarnation be better?
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Dick Dale dies
Known as The King Of The Surf Guitar, Dick Dale dies at 81. Known as an aggressive guitarist who blew people away with volume, and blew a couple of amps along the way, Dale was most famous for his single ‘Misirlou’, one of the lead songs in the movie Pulp Fiction.
Dale was also a hardcore surfer, and was always getting in the water whenever he had the opportunity.
“Surf music is a heavy machine-gun staccato picking style to represent the power of Mother Nature, of our earth, of our ocean,” he told The New York Times in 1994. His music influenced the Beach Boys as well as Jimi Hendrix. RIP dude.
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