Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay Day 1
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From the side of the road a shadow appears in my headlights before darting across in front of me. I swerve violently, the figure is gone as fast as it appeared and I strain my sleep shot eyes once again through the fogged up windscreen and out onto the barren, wet, windswept tar in front of me. After 4 days of waiting the Billabong Pro is on and I'm caning it up the N2 highway to make the 7am call and the start of the 2009 South African showpiece.
Contest director Mike Parsons calls the contest on and the site, deserted for the last 4 days, becomes an immediate hive of activity. The 3 story press box overlooking the mighty barrels of the Car Park section is swamped with huge telephoto lenses, TV crews form an orderly queue in front of a hesitant looking Kelly Slater, the stands fill slowly, the music starts, the commentary, the food stalls - this is J-Bay for the next few days, the sleepy rickety everyday boardwalk hidden beneath slick looking billboards, new decking and a Hot Tub.
Following the new contest criteria for this year's ASP World Tour, the top 16 rated surfers qualify automatically for round two so today the focus falls firmly on the second tier and the homegrown talent. The swell is building and news from up the coast indicates the cold front is filling in and we should see an increase in wave size throughout the day, the site buzzes with excitement. At 8am the first heat takes to the water in an all-French affair with Micky Picon taking out Tim Boal. With long lulls between the sets, tactics and wave priority form a huge part of the morning's heats with surfers making the best of one or two good sized sets during their allotted 35 minutes. A procession of heats follow with Aussis Dean Morrison and Kai Otton winning through along with Chris Ward until we come to Round 7 and the morning's most anticipated heat.
Shaun Holmes, J-Bay's prodigal son and perennial wildcard for this event, takes to the water to face Hawaii's Dustin Barca. Where previous heats are dogged by small and inconsistent sets we see several pass through in little over twenty minutes as Holmes trades long carves, powerful gauges and a beautiful clean barrel against Barca's fast and fluid new school slides and hacks to progress to round two to the clear delight of the partisan crowd. Greg Emslie, South Africa's most successful surfer to date, also steps up to defeat Heitor Alves of Brazil however the news for the rest of the homegrown crop is less encouraging with Davey Weir and wildcards Ryan Payne and Devyn Mattheys crashing out of their round one clashes.
Afternoon comes and the switch in tide brings hope of more consistency and a bit more size in the swell. However as the tide gets fuller and the waves stay small, they break closer to the shallow shelf making the walls quick and conditions testing: The final 4 heats see 2 restarts as neither competitor catches a single wave in the first 10 minutes. The quick cylindrical walls favour the new school antics of Ben Dunn and Dane Reynolds, taking out Portual's Tiago Pires and Aussie Drew Courtenay respectively.
With round one wrapped up, the first heat of round two takes to the water. It's a classic with former World Champion CJ Hobgood taking out a furious Micky Picon by .05 of a point. In the gathering gloom and with the clock ticking down, second placed CJ snags what looks like the last wave of one of the only good-sized sets, claiming a high seven point ride for a barrel and some critical floaters to take first place. However, on the hooter, Micky takes off on a lightning wall to smash a series of high-scoring critical top turns and a knee bucking floater onto the almost exposed reef, lifting his arms on landing to claim a widely expected victory. However the judges favour the Floridian by .05 of a point and the Frenchman bites.
With swell expected to last until Wednesday morning the majority of the contest will be run tomorrow with finals held most likely on Wednesday morning.
Check back tomorrow for Day 2 of the 2009 Billabong Pro.
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Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay Day 1 (text) by Tim Conibear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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