Photo: Bielmann//World Surf League
Wow. Seriously, what a year. Things started with “Pipeline’s for the f**king girls” and never really slowed down. We got Tati’s perfect 10. Vahine’s storybook win at home in Tahiti. Even without Carissa Moore and Steph Gilmore — winners of 13 of the past 16 women’s world titles — the ladies of the Championship Tour haven’t skipped a beat. In fact, it’s fair to say “the new guard” has officially stepped in and fully taken over now. Two of the five surfers holding position for the WSL Finals in September have just three years of tour experience (Molly Picklum, Gabriela Bryan). Meanwhile, the woman wearing yellow is just in her second year on tour.
The women’s tour is exciting and competitive and for once, fans across the board seem to agree with that fact. Here’s a short rundown of who’s positioned for the WSL Finals and who is on the outside looking in (with a chance to crash the party)
Caity Simmers
Simmers is having a breakout sophomore year, which is saying a lot considering she made the WSL Finals in her rookie campaign. Even so, this year was a step up for the young Californian who’s always tossing shoutouts to “O-Side.” After winning two events as a rookie in 2023, Simmers has won three so far in 2024. The first was undoubtedly historic, winning at proper Pipe and stamping out the instant classic post-heat soundbite. Then she rang the Bell. Then she claimed her second consecutive win in Brazil.
Caity Simmers will still be just 18 years old when she competes in her second WSL Finals in September. Whether she wins her first world title or not, she’s lining up what looks to be a legendary career.
Caroline Marks
The defending world champ made a great run in the 2023 WSL Finals and she’s backed that up with an impressive 2024 campaign. Her only blemish on the year was a round of 16 loss at the Margaret River Pro. Outside of that she’s notched a win in El Salvador, three semifinal results on the year, and is fresh off an Olympic gold medal in Tahiti.
As far as her (potential) competition in Fiji and eventually in San Clemente, Marks’ four-heat march to the world title last year outpaces the entire field of potential opponents. Only Caity Simmers has a WSL Finals heat win (one) among the remaining surfers in the top five. That alone gives her an experience advantage over Gabriela Bryan and Molly Picklum that’s at least noteworthy.
Brisa Hennessy
Brisa Hennessy has a relatively safe points lead in the rankings that should secure her spot at Lowers. Barring some kind of fluke result and a lot of leapfrogging by the likes of Johanne Defay and Tatiana Weston-Webb, Hennessy will likely make her return to Finals Day after missing out last year.
Sitting in this position now is one of surfing’s most remarkable comeback stories. Hennessy started this 2024 campaign as a season wildcard after falling off tour at the midway point of 2023. Rather than compete on the Challenger Series, the rest of 2023 was actually given to recovering from severe health issues. Hennessy told SURFER earlier this year that she’d started feeling a “brain fog” sometime in 2022 and eventually learned she had a thyroid issue that she chose to push through. It was falling off tour midway through the next season that she credited as a wake-up call to take a step back. Here she is a little more than a year later right back in the thick of a world title hunt.
Molly Picklum
Molly Picklum is in position for her second WSL Finals in just her third year on tour. The young Australian fell short of the mid-season cut her rookie year and has been on a tear ever since. She’s won back-to-back Sunset Pros and almost won this year’s Pipe Pro as well. Picklum has definitely cooled since but that’s all relative to the red hot start to 2024. Heading into Fiji, Picklum sits at her lowest ranking all season (fourth) and she only placed lower than equal fifth twice since she fell off tour in 2022. Few athletes are as reliable as Molly Picklum right now. Even if she doesn’t come away with a win in Fiji or San Clemente, it’s a safe bet she’ll be in the thick of things.
Gabriela Bryan
Gabriela Bryan won the Margaret River Pro this year and rocketed from the cut line straight into the top five. She has been hovering on that threshold ever since but if there’s one thing to take from the Western Australia performance it’s that the regular foot from Hawaii can, and will, perform with her back against the wall. That’s important because she’s going to be battling it out in Fiji with a surging Johanne Defay.
Johanne Defay
Three of Johanne Defay’s career CT wins have come at Fiji, Uluwatu, and G-Land. Regular foot or not, she can put up big results at big left-hand waves. If anybody is going to throw a wrench in the women’s rankings, Defay should be a betting favorite. Then again, she’s lost an elimination heat this year to every surfer currently in the top five. There may not be some transitive property of competitive surfing that says a past result must repeat itself but the point here is that Johanne Defay is probably the wildcard to keep an eye on at Cloudbreak.
Tatiana Weston-Webb
It’s surprising to look at the rankings and be reminded Tatiana Weston-Webb is somehow sitting outside of the top five. She’s had a big year in terms of grabbing headlines and creating historic moments but that hasn’t turned into big wins. At least not yet.
In 2021, Weston-Webb started the first-ever WSL Finals from the number two spot, beating Sally Fitzgibbons and then taking the first heat from Carissa Moore in their best of three world title matchup before losing. That kind of near-miss feels like the exact result that’s stood between her and world titles for a long time. She caught the wave of the year in Tahiti but later fell in the semifinal. She barely missed Olympic gold earlier this month with a wave in the final minute of the final round. She came up just .17 short of becoming an Olympic champion.
Weston-Webb will need more than a close call to break into the WSL Finals this year. She’s currently less than 3,500 points shy of the fifth and final spot. So she could connect on a Hail Mary and punch a ticket to California.
