The Oakley Pro at Keramas was debuted on tour in 2013. We’d seen video footage and heard plenty of stories, but nobody really knew what to expect. It was like a search event, and most were psyched. Once it started, the waves and surfing both fired, and surf fans seemed stoked with the tour’s new … Read more
Bali is back, baby! Sure, it’s been 5 years, and sure, most of the tour wasn’t around back then, but we’ve still got enough relevant data on reefs, rights and wave heights to help whittle down the best of the fantasy lot. All of our ‘career’ average heat score and win % statistics are taken … Read more
Contest Wash-Up The lead-up to Rio was a little undercooked, to put it mildly. The Founders Cup had just finished, and the surfing world was almost universally under-whelmed with pool wave contests. It turns out that most surfers actually wanted the unpredictable imperfection of the contests about which we so often complained. We were happy … Read more
I have waited long enough for the WSL to move on from their wave machine experiment and get back to the core business of managing the world tour. There is still no heat draw or mention of wildcards (as of publishing), so I’ll offer what I have for now. I’ll try to update in time, … Read more
Contest Wash-Up Julian who? The Gold Coast seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe time went so slowly because the first few rounds were so pedestrian. I was growing weary of the 2-hits-out-the-back, 3-cutbacks-through-the-trough, safety-tag-the-end-section Bells bowl monotony. Nobody seemed inspired enough to take the contest by the balls. It was almost as if everyone … Read more
We have included the data for both Mason Ho and Jacob Wilcox in case they are added to the draw. All of our our ‘career’ average heat score and win % statistics are taken from 2013-2018 WSL contest seasons. They do not reflect the entire careers of surfers who have been on tour longer than … Read more
The seeding is all over the place after some of the upsets at the Gold Coast. Let’s look at the R1 possibilities for yet another historic Bells contest: Kelly Slater – OUT 30% of WSL fantasy teams had the GOAT in their team. Despite the warnings we gave. Kelly has given plenty of notice to … Read more
Contest Wash-Up I’ve learned a lot about myself at this event and through this injury and the birth of my baby girl Olivia. Honestly, watching the birth of my first child gave me unbelievable strength to just suck it up, come down here and do what I needed to do. – Julian Wilson Julian Wilson … Read more
A lot has changed in the 12 months since I last wrote this contest preview: we have a CEO (hello Sophie; I know you’re reading); contests in wave pools have become a thing; the WSL is planning to forgo a Pipe showdown in order to run a boat-trip grand final; and Willian Cardoso qualified to … Read more
Welcome back. I may not have a brand new fantasy game ready to go for the first event of the year (dammit), but I still have plenty of stats. In fact, I have back-logged all of the 2013 season into my databases so that all of the data and projections now draw from 5 full … Read more