WET AND WILD WITH ROCKIN' FIG
Another summer blow out has come and gone. The $150,000 dollar
Philips U.S. Open of Surfing was a week-long extravaganza that Surf
City will remember for a while. The surf was overhead and shreddable
for the whole week. With the back-to-back hurricane swells, a
southern hemi mix plus west wind swell, the surfing level was at an
all time high. The vibe was good in the arena-type setting, just
about every body in the industry was hangin', not to mention the
media from all across the globe. Huge crowds of spectators, estimated
to be in the hundreds of thousands, came down to see the top surfers
in the world perform. Downtown was jumping too, with the induction
ceremonies, the autograph signings, the nighttime parties -- it was
pretty much packed with tons of surf fans everywhere. The sun
worshipers were lovin' it too, cause some of those afternoons were
baking hot and glassy, with hardly any wind.
The new criteria on the world tour is for quality, not quantity,
as most of the later heats were scored on two waves. The judges were
looking for committed radical maneuvers in the most critical sections
of the wave face, with style and control and progressive moves in
mind too, and a little bit of distance. We saw more airs thrown in
this year than ever before, but solid carving turns were still the
name of the game. But if you could throw a combo, you could rack up
the big points.
The men's final was the big showdown with the "Flyin' Hawaiian"
Kalani Robb surfing way down the beach at "David's Peak." Robb was
busting some mean lip bashes and surfing really fast connecting on
some all the way down to the pier. His last wave clinched it for him,
taking the big win and the $10,000 first place prize. Aussie shredder
Trent Munro was hot on Robb's tail, but needed one more good one.
Another Australian, Tom Whitaker, came in third with some nice heats
along the way. Fourth was Tim Curran from Oxnard who just couldn't
get the sets in the final, but blew up in the semis with a couple
bomb eight scores and looked like he could win it all.
In juniors it was an almost all Hawaiian final. Kekoa Bacalso came
out on top in the action packed field with some killer waves. Local
Huntington Beach surfer Timmy Reyes was putting on quite a show and
almost had it coming up just short, but ripping pretty hard to second
place. Hawaii's Joel Centeio and the big island's Jordy Brough were
third and fourth respectively, as a showcase of the young guns in the
