No Parko; No Slater; Bets on Florence at 2013 Hurley Pro
Tetsuhiko Endo
Brother’s Gonna Work it Out
Chris Coté
John John’s Taking Lowers
Jed SmithThe Hurley Pro is one of my favorite contests on the World Tour. As much as I love watching guys get spit out of Pipeline monsters, escape near-death axings at Teahupoo, and get sand blasted up their asses in ten-foot French beach bombs, there’s something especially gratifying watching the world’s best surfers surfing waves that 99% of us surfers can actually relate to. Lowers is a skatepark of a wave and really brings out the fun and creative side of our World Tour heroes. I liken watching the Hurley Pro to skating your home skatepark for many years then watching a pro come to the park and go places and do tricks on shit you’ve never even realized were possible or even existed—that’s what watching Lowers is like for me. I remember watching Kelly Slater in the ’90s doing the stall-fade drop in and using that speed-wipe to actually bottom turn around the white wash, go beyond vertical into the lip using the top of the whitewash as a section to snap off of. At the time, I had never seen that done before and I remember surfing Lowers many years later trying my hardest to emulate that very same approach. Slater has dominated Lowers since he slipped into his star trunks and raised his 30,000 Body Glove Surf Bout check while bro-hugging Chris Brown, Bud Llamas and Charlie Kuhn.
Slater will most likely win this year’s Hurley Pro, but I’m not picking him. I’m picking a guy who has studied Slater and the rest of the WCT past and present contingency at Lowers since he was five years old —Kolohe “Brother” Andino. I’m not picking Kolohe cause he’s a San Clemente kid, or the fact that he’s riding the best boards by the best “Lowers Board” shaper, Matt Biolos has to offer (yes, Matt saves a few secrets for his favorite team rider), and I’m not even picking Kolohe cause he’s still butthurt and pissed for not winning the US Open. Kolohe Andino has heard about enough about Nat Young being hailed as California’s next big title threat. He’s had it up to here with John John Florence being hailed as the best thing to ever happen to surfing (even though I still think he is), and he’s really sick of being thought of as a grom. A funny thing happens when a surfer wins a World Tour event—they become a man (or a woman in the case of the Women’s WCT, which, by the way, should have a stop at Lowers). Kolohe will win the Hurley Pro Lowers on the strength of combination surfing, mixing powerful hacking turns with explosive airs. He will lift the trophy and become a man, and then he will take a five-hour nap (Kolohe loves to sleep). He may have had a slow start to his World Tour campaign, but trust me—Brother’s gonna work it out.
