Surfing Australia

The wild blue yonder

The perfect wave? The perfect ride? In surfing, folklore mixes in with everyday practice, Will Swanton writes.
LAIRD Hamilton woke at 4.30am. He couldn't sleep. He ventured on to dead-man's land: the reef at Teahupoo.
Daylight now, wide awake. He stopped and said a prayer.

A rogue set reared before him. Hamilton took off and he was still alive. He descended the face and turned left and he was still alive. The monster spat and hissed and swallowed him whole. If he fell, he would die. Without a word of a lie, Laird Hamilton would die if he fell at this moment.
He emerged from the cathedral, the green room, the barrel, the pit, the shack, from behind the big blue curtain, whatever you want to call it, and he was still alive. Right then, right there, he believed in God.

What he did on August 17, 2000, was beyond courageous. That was obsession. That was lunacy. That was bordering on psychotic. Teahupoo means "crushed skull". Men have been killed on the razor-sharp reef on waves half the size of Hamilton's.
All of it adds to the legend. This is the most famous wave in surfing history. But was it perfection? Does perfection even exist?

Is perfection Hamilton's 10-second ride that bordered on a religious experience? Cruising down Jeffrey's Bay with a dozen dolphins dropping in? Getting on the superbank on the Gold Coast and carving your way down towards Kirra? Slipping across to the beach before work and having a couple of little ones all to yourself as the sun is coming up? Standing up for the first time? Getting tubed for the first time? Getting a 10-point ride in a heat on the World Championship Tour? Perfection: does it even exist?

The WCT judges say, "Bloody oath it does". They're not shy about giving maximum points.
The Rip Curl Pro starts on Tuesday at Bells Beach and there's nothing more certain than that someone will get a 10. Cynics abound. They say a 10 isn't worth a 10 any more because every man and his dog gets one. They say it's a grab by organisers for mainstream publicity, that the judges have lost the plot.

"A 10 isn't about riding the perfect wave," said Australia's 20-year tour veteran Luke Egan. "It's about riding the waves on offer in a particular heat as well as they can possibly be ridden.
"The judges don't want repetition on waves. They're scoring radical and futuristic manoeuvres a lot more generously and that's good, but the best thing in surfing right now is having two waves count in a heat instead of three."

American Shane Beschen paddled out at Kirra on the Gold Coast in 1996, caught three waves, paddled in and had 30 points to his name. That's 30 out of 30. It's the highest single heat score in WCT history, and will continue to be.

Four years ago, the pro surfing fraternity pushed for two-wave heat scores and got its wish. The result? More dynamic surfing. More risks being taken. Fewer upsets.
"It's been an extremely important change," Egan said. "Three sixes are 18 and two eights are 16. It used to annoy us that three mediocre rides could beat two exceptional rides. The guy with two eights is the better surfer.

"The level of surfing for spectators, and for the surfers themselves, is allowed to be more spectacular because of it."
The perennial problem on the WCT is whether the judges get it right. Tough gig, being a judge. Critics everywhere. Arguments. Accusations of bias. The battlers believe the big guns receive higher scores because of their reputations.

They're probably right. The judges are only human. If Kelly Slater finishes a wave and howls with delight, are the judges going to tell him it wasn't really that good? Five blokes sit there passing judgement on every wave. Five blokes don't always agree.
"I was disappointed with the judging at the Quiksilver Pro," Egan said of the first WCT event of the year, which Slater won on the Gold Coast.

"In my opinion, a few of them on the judging panel are getting a little too opinionated for their own good. They need to agree on what a good score is. They shouldn't have different points of view on that."

Beschen has said judges should watch video replays of waves before lodging their scores and the Association of Surfing Professionals head judge, Perry Hatchett, revealed the Bells Beach event would be the first to use the technology.

"It'll help in taking some of the subjectivity out of it," Hatchett said from his home at Margaret River, Western Australia. "Sometimes you can't win with judging. You give someone a 10 and people start saying it was only a 9.8. You give a 9.8 and someone says we've ripped them off and it should've been 10. The replays are a big change. With one-on-one heats, we've got time up your sleeve to watch the replay while the surfers paddle back out. It's a big change.

"People see webcasts of heats and see replays we don't. They're getting a second opportunity to write us off. We may as well see the same replays."

Hatchett claimed few people understood the mechanics of the scoring system. The five judges lodge their scores. The highest and lowest are discarded. But here's the key: each score is a comparison to other waves in the same heat. If one surfer records a 9.9 and his rival gets a wave deemed to be better, it must be a 10. "People get confused and give us flak," Hatchett said. "But what they don't realise is that the waves are all comparative. This wave is being compared to the waves we've already seen in the heat.

"If the scores start high but the waves keep getting better, the scores are going to be pushed up. That's the most important aspect people have to understand. I can see why you might think there are too many 10s, but there are reasons."

Competition is just one branch on the surfing tree. The vast majority of WCT competitors say their best sessions have come far away from the pressures of crowds, judges, ranking points and prizemoney. They've come amid great serenity when they're surfing for surfing's sake, out with nature, feeling free.

The biggest, most memorable session of all, Hamilton's in Tahiti, was witnessed by about 20 people, for instance. He's never been on the WCT and never will be.
The case against Hamilton's wave being perfection: he was towed on to it by a power-ski. He didn't paddle on to the face in the traditional manner. Traditionalists hate that. There were no manoeuvres. They hate that, too.

No turns after the initial swing left. He just hung on for dear life.
The case for perfection: Hamilton redefined what it meant to have a go. The immortality he's gained from that one wave stems from the mortality that would have been proved on the spot had he fallen.

Those watching recall screaming with a mixture of horror and delight. The man himself was so moved he sat in the water and meditated, prayed again, put his head in his hands and cried. What the hell had he just done? What comes next?
"We haven't seen what we're capable of," Hamilton said. "It's … a question only God and Mother Nature can answer."

THE RIP CURL PRO
WHERE: Bells Beach, Torquay
WHEN: Competition window is April 11-21, depending on waves.

PAST FIVE WINNERS
2005 TRENT MUNRO
2004 JOEL PARKINSON
2003 ANDY IRONS
2002 ANDY IRONS
2001 MICK FANNING