Every year, the Wedge cleans house. It’s a place where making a wave doesn’t really matter all that much. It’s more about the drop and (hopefully) a few seconds of barrel vision before getting clamped on and trying desperately to keep the sand from entering all your orifices at high rates of speed.
And now, with summer and south swells in the rearview, The Wedge Awards has bundled up all the best wedge wipeouts from a season full of wipeouts to give us the Wedge Wipeout of the Year Nominees.
Jack Harris is in there. So are Griffin McGowan, Hunter Schoonover, Tyler Thornsley, and Chad Wadsworth, all of whom are very committed to the send. There’s no better place to be committed to the send better than the Wedge, so anyone who surfs there on a regular basis is acclimatized to the inevitable beatdowns that inherently come with Newport’s weirdest wave. They’re not used to it, exactly, but they know what to expect when they paddled for a massive, warping lump of water that probably won’t do exactly what you think it’s going to do. But, like I said, surfing the Wedge isn’t necessarily about making a wave… it’s just about riding a wave.
