If day three of the 2015 Fiji Pro showed us what “the world’s best surfers in the world’s best waves” looks like, then day four showed us why they’re the world’s best.
It was another full day of action as WSL Commissioner Keiren Perrow called for competition to run all the way through Round Five. With the swell building throughout the afternoon and peaking in the 10-12 foot+ range, Cloudbreak pumped out some massive sets. Even in tricky conditions, the top surfers in world responded with some massive scores.
Parkinson’s Perfect 10
The fourth round of the event had the most stacked three-man heats we have seen all year so far. Julian Wilson started off by beating Kelly Slater and Taj Burrow in a dominating performance with a 9.93 and 9.50.
In heat three, it was two former World Champs, Joel Parkinson and Mick Fanning, and current World No.6 Owen Wright. Each surfer was laser focused, trading off 8-point rides throughout the whole heat. It was anybody’s to win with around 17 minutes left on the clock, when a gigantic set rolled through catching Fanning and Wright off guard. As both of them sat too deep and watched a freight train of a wave go by, Parkinson dropped in on the inside.
Fading into his bottom turn as the wave stood tall over the reef to be about three times overhead, Parkinson fought the chop up the face, grabbed rail, and pulled the brakes. The result was a 10-second barrel the size of a school bus spitting him out to a unanimous decision from the judges, a perfect 10. All three surfers continued to find high scores, but there just wasn’t another wave that could compare and Parko moved through straight to the Quarter Finals.
Owen Wright’s Perfect Heat
After watching Parkinson grab the round four win from underneath him, Wright was fired up and in rare form. Before his round five heat, the webcast showed him trying to find a little isolation on the small ferry boat, opting to study the ocean first-hand while his opponent, Adam Melling, studied the broadcast from inside the boat. Conditions looked ripe for huge turns instead of tubes.
All of that must have flown out the window, because not even five minutes had gone by when Wright sized up a clean one. Casually pulling into the pit, he stood tall and fully covered before coming out and straight into a huge hack off the top. To finish it off, he found another barrel on the inside before kicking out. The judges loved it, with another unanimous decision, giving Wright the perfect 10.
With the announcers still frothing over that wave at the 10-minute mark, Wright sized up another one. Dropping into the most beautiful bomb Cloudbreak could offer, he looked for the tube once again and the ocean delivered.
Wright is six foot three inches tall, and he stretched that height in that barrel like a kid hoping to ride the roller coaster at the county fair. With knees basically locked, Wright, perfectly positioned, milked the wave for all it was worth getting spit out with his hands high in excitement.
The judges took no time to decide, and with another unanimous 10-point ride on the board, Wright had just signed his name in the history books. The seventh perfect heat score ever, according to the WSL. With a 20-point heat total, he joined a very short list of other professional surfers to achieve the perfect heat.
On top of his history-making performance, Wright continued to surf with 20 minutes still left in the heat. Trading off great waves with Melling until the end, Wright grabbed another 8.77, which was his fourth excellent-range score. Melling never gave up, with a valiant effort he snagged a 9.70 to finish with a 17.70 heat score, which was better than the winning scores of all the other round five heats.
At the end of the day, Wright’s history-making performance overshadowed the losses of some of the top contenders like Slater and Fanning who both went down in the fifth round and will have to bounce back at J-Bay.
Fortunately for the fans, the Quarter Final draw has Joel Parkinson and Owen Wright surfing against each other in heat three. This event just keeps getting better.
