John John Florence being his usual self. Photo by Tony Heff//World Surf League
The 2011 Vans World Cup at Sunset Beach was a major moment in John John Florence’s career. He was still a teenager at the time and the event wrapped up the North Shore prodigy’s first full year on the World Qualifying Series — a hunt for Championship Tour qualification that didn’t last long, as it was also Florence’s only full year on the QS. He had a win at Pipe to kick off the campaign and a win at Sunset wouldn’t just close the season on a high note, it would solidify the high expectations the surf world already had for his dominance at home.
According to Randy Rarick, who jumped in the WSL broadcast booth on Finals Day at the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach Wednesday, that QS win didn’t just send John John into the 2012 CT with momentum, it’s actually changed the way surfers approach the wave ever since.
“John John, when he won at Sunset, (he) redefined how guys surf Sunset. Prior to that, it was kind of the old school. Guys had longer boards, they would take off further outside, they would fade into the pit more, (and) set the inside up,” Rarick explained, elaborating on the typical approach to surfing Sunset Beach at the time.
Florence didn’t have the same build back then. He was tall but smaller overall, not as muscular and broad as he is now in his 30s. Rarick pointed out that John’s slight build at the time pushed him toward a totally different style at the deepwater wave.
“He moved inside,” Rarick explained. “He was taking off under the lip, just basically falling into the waves rather than paddling into the waves. That redefined, in the last 10 to 15 years, what surfing has happened here at Sunset Beach, much the same way that Kelly did with Pipeline and Backdoor.”
The comments point to an evolution at one of the sport’s most iconic waves and Rarick’s historical perspective sets an interesting plot point for when and how change has occurred there. Sunset Beach was a longtime stopping point on the QS. Specifically, it had a run of about 15 years where it was the final stop in the series. A lot of surfers’ paths to the CT were either made or broken there in that era.
Meanwhile, Pipeline’s shift from the end of the year to the beginning — one that was forced by local permitting all the way back in 2018 — probably played a big role in making Sunset a regular stop on the Championship Tour instead, where the tour has held its second contest of the season now for three years running. And to Rarick’s point, much of today’s men’s and women’s tours are filled with surfers who came up right behind John John Florence. You can bet there were some attempts to recreate the same stylistic success John John turned into a winning method back in 2011.
