After a long five lay days of fishing and ping pong, WSL Commissioner Kieren Perrow decided to kick off the first round of competition and let the Top 34 test out Cloudbreak in a building swell.
The swell showed up, but so did the onshore wind making conditions tricky with few barrels like we would all expect at one of the best waves in the world after waiting five days. That being said, the goofy-footers took the lead with some serious dominating front-hand rail work.
Blue and Goofy
Seven out of the 12 goofy-foot ‘CT surfers won their heats during the first day of competition. Six out of the 12 heats in Round One were won by surfers wearing blue jerseys, taking out majority of the top seeds.
Wiggolly Dantas started the momentum, wearing blue and surfing on his forehand. Although wildcard Jay Davies, surfing as an injury replacement for Brett Simpson, was one guy fortunate enough to find some real tube time with an 8.17 score against Dantas, he pulled off the win with two scores right around the seven point range.
Aussies Adrian Buchan and Kai Otton followed in the fourth heat, beating Filipe Toledo number two in the rankings and then Adriano De Souza, the rankings leader with obvious experience over the Brazilians.
2014 World Champion Gabriel Medina finally showed up looking to defend his title in Fiji and the World, grabbing the highest wave score of the round with a 9.23. “Dark Horse,” Jeremy Flores put up a good fight, but couldn’t best Medina who seems to have found a rhythm.
Top seed goofy-footer Nat Young also found a heat win after Owen Wright lost Heat 8 due to a broken board in a last minute attempt to better Sebastian Zietz’s come-from-behind effort.
Jadson Andre was on fire in Heat 10 against Adam Melling, getting three 7-point rides and using that consistency to beat out Melling’s 9.0 in the last minutes of the heat.
Italo Ferreira ended the day representing the “Blue and Goofy” crew with an air reverse to take the win in Heat 12.
With the middle seeds in blue taking charge, the day also saw some big upsets including Kelly Slater’s Heat 1 loss to Wilcard Alejo Muniz who also took down last year’s runner-up in this event, Kolohe Andino, sending them both to duke it out in Round 2. Ferreira’s win also sent Joel Parkinson into the Round 2 battle.
CJ Hobgood announces retirement
The biggest news today came from the post heat interview with CJ Hobgood in Heat 8 as he casually announced he will be retiring at the end of the 2015 Tour. Todd Kline asked Hobgood why he had paddled out in Kelly Slater’s jersey, which Hobgood responded with a speech about respecting Slater as a surfer and ended with him saying the idea came from his decision to retire. “I don’t ever want to put on a jersey again,” Hobgood said.
With the pressure off, I bet we will see some great surfing from the former World Champion in the rest of this contest and the rest of the year.
The swell is continuing to build and should begin to hollow out the line up at Cloudbreak changing the game for the next round. With the likes of Slater, Parko, Wright, Toledo and the rest of the surfers headed to Round 2, the surfing will only get better from here.
