How are the WSL judges going to explain their scoring in the Hurley Pro? Will they rely on their mystic understanding of speed, power and flow, which are beyond the grasp of mortal humans and professional surfers? Or is it about time to introduce a coherent and more accurate judging criteria?
Two days after Gabriel Medina’s round 3 heat against Tanner Gudauskas and the frenzy is showing no signs of slowing down. Whatever your take is on the score there seems to be a controversy surrounding the judging panel, with claims being made on Medina’s early 8.83 as well. And should the mysterious “panel” reveal their thought process to us, will we dare contest it, could we even understand it?
The WSL Judging criteria relies on five elements Ross Williams recites in his sleep:
- Commitment and degree of difficulty
- Innovative and progressive maneuvers
- Combination of major maneuvers
- Variety of maneuvers
- Speed, power and flow
These elements are somehow quantified on a scale from 1-10, determining the surfer’s score. This process has never been fully explained. Are they worth two points each? How do you score variety of maneuvers at Teahupo’o or Commitment and degree of difficulty at Rio? The only conclusion here is that judges cannot be held accountable for their decisions because they have no reliable clear system of justifying them in the first place. Here is a simplified way to think about competitive surfing based on the code used in many panel judged sports, but simplified as “There aren’t too many complicated rules in professional surfing”(WSL):
The new criteria will be made up of only two elements
- Commitment and degree of difficulty
- Successful completion of maneuvers
Take a moment to compare the two and think of this: Innovative maneuvers, major maneuvers, speed and power. They are all just elements of commitment and degree of difficulty, plus they determine how difficult the overall ride was. Let’s combine them and still rank on a score of 1-10. Now that we have the difficulty score down, we can score the variety of maneuvers and flow as part of the successful completion of a ride or even how beautiful the ride was. This score starts from 10 and subtracts every time the surfer makes an error. Simple, right? For each ride we have two scores from every judge, these are displayed to the audience, no more secrecy. Next combine these scores and average them out, and this the final score on a rank of 1-10 and the final score of the ride.
Math aside, this would give us a much more explicit way to score surfing. It could take a little time to get used to but should be more credible than a number assigned by meaningless elements that never explain the score. The way professional surfing is going we need ways to push surfers to the limits of their talents. With the current criteria surfers are looking for the safety of the snap turn and mostly stay away from risky maneuvers. Scoring for difficulty will push surfers to try explosive, exciting maneuvers, knowing they can at least score some points for the attempt at going huge. It would be interesting to think of Kelly’s 4.17 at Trestles as a perfect 10 from that perspective. More importantly any reliable criteria will help judges and surfers communicate better and help fans understand what they’re watching before the WSL develops a major credibility problem.
