By Phil Jarratt
Having suffered my seasonal Mac meltdown over here in Bali, I was reduced to watching the Swatch and Hurley Pros lying in bed at some ungodly hour, holding my phone a few centimetres from my face in the darkness.
To be honest, it wasn’t really worth it. Lower Trestles was about the size I like it – although when we lived just up the road, the aggressive crowds would usually drive me further south to San Onofre, where the crowds were even worse, but mostly made up of mellow old longboarders – but for two WSL world tour events heading towards the pointy end of the season, nah, not really.
Especially in the early heats, which came on around midnight where I am, with grey sky meeting grey, glassy surf conditions in a confusion of colour absence that was hard enough for the surfers to work out, near impossible for my grainy wi fi reception on the screen of a mobile phone!
Yes, I’m a world surf tour tragic. Some people are F1 tragics. Me, I’d rather watch a grey phone screen in the middle of the night and wait forever for the next set, than I would inhale high octane fumes from a Monte Carlo apartment terrace while simultaneously going decibel-deaf, as I once did. But each to his own pleasure and pain.
So just when I was about to give it all away in the wee hours last week, a seemingly nervous young girl from Mooloolaba, whose progression through the heats I had been watching off and on, suddenly started to shift into a higher gear, to find something deep within herself.
This was already her best result on tour so far, and as California’s Courtney Conlogue put together a surgical semi of cut and carve, the pundits, including Australia’s silver fox Barton Lynch, had written off Keely Andrew.
Bad mistake. Two minutes to go and needing a high seven, Keely started paddling frantically up the line towards Middles, seeing something looming in the grey glass.
I sat up in bed and reached for my spectacles. Yes, it was a set wave, and Keely was positioned perfectly. Fast out of a top turn and along the face, down into the power and gouge and slash. The old one-two. “Wowwww!” as Pottz is wont to say.
It was the right stuff at the right time, and Keely knew it, claiming it with a double fist as she straightened in front of the rocks.
The fairytale version would now have Keely claiming her maiden world tour victory in a fiercely-fought final, but Our Keels ran into some one else’s fairytale, in the form of feisty Brazilian veteran Silvana Lima, who has been on a tear since making it back into the big league following years in the wilderness. It was going to take a freight train to stop Silvana, and even though the railroad track is just adjacent to the break at Trestles, nothing came through.
None of which matters for 2016’s rookie of the year, who has now snuck into eleventh spot on the leader board, and with a confidence boost like this, must be looking good for a top ten finish. I love the way Keely surfs, and the next time she’s up – in a week or so in Portugal – I hope I can watch on a slightly bigger screen.
Meanwhile on the men’s tour, Filipe Toledo continued the Brazilian Storm by clinching his second win of the season against rankings leader Jordy Smith in a very one-sided final, despite the judges mysteriously awarding Jordy an underserved nine to give him a chance of stealing the event.
The fiery Filipe has already missed one event this year due to suspension, so it’s doubly lucky for him that Jordy couldn’t find a backup in the dying minutes.
While his second placing cemented Jordy’s position at the top of the leader board, the deck shuffled dramatically due to the early exits of Australians Matt Wilkinson and Owen Wright, allowing Julian Wilson (who finished just outside the quarters) to leapfrog both of them into third position. Smith and second-placed John Florence still have a commanding points break, but on adjusted points, Our Jules definitely has a show at a long-awaited world title.
There are three events left in the season and Jules has previously won two of them – the Rip Curl Pro in Peniche, Portugal, and Hawaii’s Billabong Pipeline Masters.
It’s a big ask, but not beyond a rampaging Julian Wilson!
