It took me at least three episodes to realize why Hurley had titled their season-long John John Florence doc series “Twelve.” Now that I’ve shared my pointless embarrassing fact for the day, we can focus on how cool the concept of this series is. As surfing fans, we’ve never been treated to a real candid look at the day-to-day lives of our favorite athletes. Youtube existed five years ago when Kelly Slater won his last World Title. Maybe that series would have been called “Eleven.” Or “Ke11y.” And it’s not like sports documentaries couldn’t or didn’t exist until 2016. But this one feels like it’s been almost two decades in the making.
John John Florence is the product of the first generation we got to watch grow up on the internet, rather than waiting for that magazine shot once every month, or the occasional film segment. Finding footage of Andy Irons as a grom isn’t impossible, but digging out a handful of his clips compared to the mountain of footage Florence has been giving us since he was eight is a different monster. The point is, we’ve watched today’s World Champion grow into his place as the best professional surfer on Tour in real time. Who knows where this guy’s legacy will place when it’s all said and done, but for the first time ever we’re getting a chance to see that play out in front of us instead of waiting month to month to read about it.
So here’s episode 5 of 7 in Hurley’s “Twelve.” This was the first time we saw Florence in a yellow jersey, how he handled the pressure, and ultimately how it played into his World #1 campaign for 2016.
“Can he hold onto the lead? Can he surf with his knee? How’s the pressure of holding the yellow jersey? You start to listen to all these stories that people create, you start to fall into that and believe in them. So I think that kind of caught up to me.” -John Florence
