![]() John sees something other’s don’t out there. Jack Robinson: “It’s the best one I’ve ever seen”. Was it the best tube-ride ever at Margarets? “You never see guys backdoor the bubble,” said Jack Robinson with respect to John’s ten-point ride. It highlighted, seconds later, the rarity, the perfection of the read and the gap between John and the rest of the field, when he backdoored the right, spent the whole wave ducking and weaving deep behind an imperfect curtain and emerged with just enough time to throw a claim and smash the end section. I paraphrase her, but that was the gist of it. Unlike Sally Fitzgibbons, who nonetheless did us a great service in the booth when she broke down the mechanics of the Main Break right, describing the difficulty of getting the first turn high on the face, the extensive area of dead, flat water to be traversed and the insanity of the end closeouts, whereby two great confluences of whitewater triangles converge, making surfers into versions of aquatic crash-test dummies. Like Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra he makes hungry where most he satisfies. The one impression left by John Florence, both after his heat, and the extended edit he dropped the day before the comp began was that we wanted more. Thus, despite some spitting bombs in the afternoon and an over fifty-year history in surfing competition the lefthanders at Main Break were left to go unridden. Other lefts ridden by Jordy Smith and Ace Buchan were inconsequential to heat totals. One by Japanese rookie Amuro Tsuzuki for the heat winning high score of a 7.33, a wobbly fat-faced thing. By my count, three lefts were ridden today. We barely need to say Main Break rights, it is righthander now as defined by the world’s best. Medina was on a 6’2”, looking imperious, Ryan Callinan on a 6’4” laid down the best backside two-turn combo ever seen at Main Break rights for a 9.80. ![]() It’s been so era defining that Griffin Colapinto admitted he was riding a 6’1” copy of John’s board and the rest of the field was doing likewise. You can’t argue, of course, with what John Florence can do on a 6’2” in big surf. No current, no crowd, and a jet ski to ferry you back after every wave there’s no need for a board that can deal with a big paddle anymore. Pros now ride 6’2″s, what my pal Derek Hynd calls “Christmas boards for kids”, as a matter of course in ten-foot surf. The black hole in the quiver is between 6’6” and 9’0”. The days of pro’s riding anything bigger than 6’6” are over. We know the biggest waves went unridden, Moniz said the “bomb sets are not rideable” but nonetheless it did confirm the full extinction of the mid-length step-up in the pro surfing caper. ![]() Great opening day in what Seth Moniz called Hawaiian five feet at Main Break, Margaret River. Great day in waves Hawaiian Seth Moniz described as "five feet". ![]()
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