Jordy Smith is the defending champion, and is wearing the yellow jersey going into Trestles. Of course he is one of the favourites to win. The thing is, even if he wasn't the defending champion and the current Jeep Leaderboard tour leader, he would still be one of the favourites to win this event. He flourishes at Trestles, a wave that suits his surfing, and a wave at which he feels every bit as confortable as if he was surfing homebreak New Pier. It is a sure thing that he is going to do well here, and with the amount of impetus he has already it will be a great surprise if he doesn’t make it past the quarterfinals at the very least. His equipment is spot-on and dialed in, so we can expect explosions again this year from the South African. Is he going to get a world title? With a win at Trestles he will be en route.
Julian Wilson has finally found the killer instinct that seemed to evade him for so many years. It’s like he has started tasting the sweetness of victory, wants more of it and is ready to fight for it. This could be from his work with Andy King, or it could just be a natural progression from nice kid to focused athlete. He has always had the skills and the conditioning, but often lacked the killer push at the end when it was most needed. His recent victory at Chopes would have given him a massive confidence boost, and he knows his way around the Trestles line-up like the best of them. Actually, he is the best of them.
Filipe Toledo doesn't have much to prove in smaller, high performance waves like Trestles, but he goes out and proves something every time anyway. This year we can expect dynamite from the young natural-footer, and will most likely be blown away by multi-aerial moves and combos, as he takes to the sky and heads towards the final. He will be wanting to bank a great result here to give him some momentum into Europe, because he’s most likely not going to feature in Hawaii and needs to make a serious points deposit before then. He does have a victory in Portugal behind him (2015) and made the semi-finals at Trestles last year.
Stuart Kennedy is brooding at the moment, waiting for his time to shine. Currently rated 30th on the Jeep leaderboard, he knows that he needs to break out in the back half of the season in order to requalify via the Championship Tour, and he doesn't have a Qualifying Series campaign to back himself up with. He has the goods though, as he proved to all of us last year, he just hasn't been able to get out of the starting block much this year thus far. He did bank a quarterfinal at Trestles last year, and his fast and snappy surfing suits Trestles perfectly. If his boards go anything like they did last year, he’s in the game.
Ethan Ewing is another surfer who is failing to get out of the starting blocks, but this tournament could well be the one that does it for him. He desperately needs to find some sort of rhythm and if he could get through a few rounds here and get going, he’ll be in a good place to attack the rest of the events throughout the tail end of the year. He is an incredibly talented surfer, and should he find that elusive rhythm he could wreak some sort of havoc on complacent old-schoolers and join the legitimate up-and-comers. Right now he has the ignominy of only getting out of one heat thus far this year, but this is in direct contrast to how fast, loose and dynamic the kid is. Trestles is also the kind of wave that would really suit Ewing should he get going, and we think that this event is where he is going to shine, and vindicate his position on the championship tour in front of the world. Let’s not forget, the kid’s only 19 years old. If he follows anything like Kelly’s route, he’s got about 30 years of competing ahead of him.
