The Tour is back! Photo: WSL
Following a tumultuous offseason, the World Surf League released its three-stop schedule for the 2022 World Longboard Tour today. Manly Beach in Australia and California’s Huntington Beach and Malibu will all host stops this season.
“We’re looking forward to kicking off the World Longboard Tour and crowning world champions later this year at the iconic break of First Point, Malibu,” said Devon Howard, WSL Longboard Tour Director. “We’re also excited that this year’s Tour will start at Manly Beach then continue on at Huntington Beach. All of this Tour’s breaks are steeped in longboard history spanning back to the 1960s, where champions were crowned and surf culture as we know it today entered the world stage.”
Manly is set to go down May 16-24 to kick off the year. And what a year it’s been. After winning a world title last season, Joel Tudor created serious waves this winter when he made several disparaging social media posts about the World Longboard Tour and the possibility that the WSL would cancel most of the events, among other complaints. A subsequent barrage of social media spite followed, and Tudor was suspended by the WSL for a still undetermined amount of time for what the League deemed “conduct detrimental to the integrity of the WSL per the WSL Rule Book.”
At the time of the suspension, the WSL told us that they were working on the tour schedule. Ironically, the second stop of the tour, Huntington Beach, will be part of the Duct Tape Invitational August 3-7, an event Tudor created. The US Open of Surfing runs July 27-August 7 in Huntington and is a WSL Challenger Series event.
Manly and Huntington are both worth 5,000 points while Malibu, the final event of the tour October 3-13, will count for 10,000 towards the world title. The WSL tells The Inertia that the prize purse for both Manly and Huntington is $50,000 ($25,000 for each division), and a $100,000 for Malibu ($50,000 per division). All three events are set to be broadcast live at WorldSurfLeague.com and on the League’s channels.
