How much did you miss watching John John Florence surf? After what felt like a decade off the tour with an injury, JJF is back in action, and he’s looking pretty damn good. At the Snapper/DBah event, he found himself on the losing end of Kolohe Andino’s sharpest knife, getting eliminated in the first heat of the semis. Still, though, it was a solid finish, and if one is to judge by his Bells performance, he’s just warming up. Take, for example, his near-perfect heat against Owen Wright.
Wright opened strong with an 8.17 (questionably high, according to many). JJF answered back with a 6.93, which had John fans lobbing internet rocks from the comment boards at the judges’ tower. John, though, in typical John fashion, didn’t let it phase him. He does, after all, thrive in conditions like the ones that graced the iconic spot. The big, warbly, powerful waves suit his style of surfing just about perfectly. When it comes to making chaotic surf look manageable, there is no one better than him.
Florence steadily hammered away at those massive walls posting higher and higher scores until the horn sounded. By then, his two best waves, a 9.63 and an 8.53, pushed him through to the quarter-finals, where he’ll come up against perhaps the only person who equals him in waves like the ones we’re seeing at the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach: Gabriel Medina.
