According to an Instagram story recently posted by Jordy Smith’s wife, Lyndall, the current World Number 3 had surgery on his left knee sometime in the last week. It wasn’t immediately clear what type of knee surgery it was other than it was an injury Smith had apparently been dealing with for an unspecified time. From the looks of the story from Lyndall, he won’t have much down time.
We reached out to the South African for comment but have yet to hear back on the specifics – specifically if the surgery will impact his status for the Surf Ranch event next week (hard to think it won’t). The World Surf League’s website currently has Smith listed as injured for the upcoming event. He’s also on track to represent his home country at the end of July in Japan for the 2020 (now 2021) Olympics where surfing will debut so there’s a solid chance he had the surgery at this point to try and be ready for that very visible contest.
Smith has looked uber-solid during the first two legs of the 2020-2021 campaign, ending fifth at Pipe and finishing runner-up at Margaret River. He hasn’t ended worse than ninth in any other contest. Of course the final at Trestles will feature the Top 5 finishers and missing the Surf Ranch will very likely bounce him out of that group. But he’ll still have Mexico and Tahiti to make up that ground if there aren’t any unexpected hiccups in his rehab.