The Drug Aware Margaret River Pro was surely one of the most bizarre and incredible events in competitive surfing history. It’s hard to recall an event that tested surfers so completely in every facet of the sport than the Margaret River Pro of 2015. The cards were on the table from the outset. The contest was to be shared evenly between The Box–arguably the most technical still-paddleable death slab on the planet–and the highly contestable Main Break. No one was safe. It was the goofy footers taking the heat early, CJ Hobgood pulling the rip cord one of the squarest waves you’ll ever see, and in the process, sacrificing a board borrowed from the champ, Kelly Slater. He was none too pleased either but later admitted that CJ, “…had to go.”
Many in the draw had never surfed The Box prior to the event–a ridiculous oversight when you think about it–and it showed. Freddy P, Gabriel Medina and and Alejo Muniz meanwhile, played out one of the strangest heats in a long time. Each surfer refused to commit to the barrel, instead opting for end-section floaters to rack up points. Gabriel Medina was one such virgin, and it showed with the now famously hairless Brazilian getting bent over and punished by wildcard and Box master, Jay Davies. The gargantuan local looked right at home in the moist insides of the Box, putting his foot down when necessary and delicately massaging its insides until it spat with delight.
The round two round loss leaves Medina well down the ratings and looking far from convincing in 2015. But what a performance it was from the local lad, Jay Davies, taking down the reigning world champ, Medina, and current gold jersey wearer Mick Fanning in consecutive heats. It led him to a Main Break shoot out with none other than John John Florence, but the Hawaiian prodigy was in another stratosphere. Margaret River Main Break might have had its critics (frick, I was one of them) but not after this event. This bouncing, wedging, wrapping beast of an open ocean A-Frame pits surfers against Mother Nature like few other events on tour have the capacity to do. And that was before they even stood up. Once on the wave, it was an art form to surf it well–even more so than Bells, I’d argue, which is notoriously difficult to time. No one did it better than Double John. His timing and ability to flow heavy rail turns from the pocket back onto the foam ball and out again, using every bit of available speed and slope to do it, was masterful. It was a formula that took him to the final and to within two end-section floaters of victory. But it wasn’t to be. Adriano De Souza surfed the Australian leg of his life, with a semi-final, final and now a win to put a huge gap between he and the next best, Mick Fanning. It’s the sort of surfing that screams world title. His brutish power and flow topped with a no-holds barred competitive attitude that’s got more than a couple on tour rattled. None more so than Taj Burrow, who copped a gale force Brazilian Storm in the semi-final, revealing after the heat, quite remarkably I thought, that De Souza had gotten “under his skin” from the opening priority tussle. The Brazilian was faultless in wave selection and his use of priority, converting wrapping bowls into mid-eights with several daring end-section lip-line floaters. It’s hard to recall a more consummate competitive performance, really: skill topped with intelligence and a heavy helping of competitive headfuckery.
It’s impossible to talk about this event without talking about the performance of the GOAT himself: Kelly Slater. He was as creative as ever across both the Box and Main Break, with his in-the-barrel hack at the latter, included in a highest event heat total of 19.5, along with a perfect ten for an insane 10-foot+ double up tube, followed by the turn of the event. That was was as good as any he’s produced in his career, and a signal that there’s still plenty of fight left in this 42-year-old’s limbs. He would go down fighting to De Souza in the quarters, but it was still classic Slater.
It’s no secret these two share a heated rivalry, with Adriano now leading their head-to-head match ups by a considerable margin. But while the Brazilian walked away with the win, Slater won the hearts and minds with pure balls-out charging. While Adriano racked up scores on mid-sized bowling rights, Slater scoured the lineup for the biggest, thickest keg he could find. He eventually found what he was looking for: a genuine 12-foot open ocean wedge; pretty much the scariest kind of pit Huey can serve up. He ended up pin dropping out of the lip in the sort of wipeout you only see once every few years. It rattled his cage, too. Big time. An exhausted Slater could be seen paddling his broken board to the channel where he sat and gathered himself leaving Adriano to ply his trade on inside eight footers. That was it for Slater, but a 9th on the ratings has him well placed for a mid-season assault on the ratings as the tour rounds on his favored stomping grounds of Fiji and Tahiti.
