PASTA POINT, Maldives — Hawai‘i surfers were successful yesterday at the Association of Surfing Professionals World Qualifying Series 6-Star PRIME SriLankan Airlines Pro in the Maldives. Starting the day with six surfers still in contention, they ended the day with
PASTA POINT, Maldives — Hawai‘i surfers were successful yesterday at the Association of Surfing Professionals World Qualifying Series 6-Star PRIME SriLankan Airlines Pro in the Maldives. Starting the day with six surfers still in contention, they ended the day with five of them through to the quarterfinals.
The only one eliminated was former ASP world champion Sunny Garcia in the opening heat against fellow Hawaiian Makua Rothman.
Rothman and Garcia surfed a classic heat with the lead switching multiple times throughout. Garcia trailed coming into the final minute, requiring an 8.33, caught a strong medium-sized wave, but fell just short of the required scoreline and Rothman took the win.
“It was such a pleasure to surf against Sunny who I have so much respect for and to win the heat was great for me,” Rothman said. “The Hawaiians are doing good here because the waves are so good. We know how to surf good waves, powerful full bottom-to-top turns. This is an event that delivers waves so we expect to do well. We’re here as a team and hopefully we can win.”
With Hawai‘i surfers filling the first two quarterfinals today, the one certainty at this event is that a Hawaiian will be in the final.
Rothman’s win was followed by a series of outstanding winning performances from Hawai‘i’s Kekoa Bacalso, Joel Centeio, Dustin Cuizon and Dustin Barca and they’ll all go into the final day full of confidence and spirit.
Nathan Yeomans continued his giant killing run here taking out reigning ASP world junior champion Pablo Paulino and again put on a super stylish and powerful display. Already, this is Yeomans’ best ever performance at ASP level and the young Californian is focused on his quarterfinals bout ahead.
“I feel like I’m the underdog and there’s no pressure really on me,” Yeomans said. “The waves are so perfect that I just go out every heat thankful that I can surf in such fantastic conditions and I’ll continue to do that. It’s worked up to now!”
Portugal’s Tiago Pires was again very impressive yesterday, opening his heat with an excellent 8.5 ride before backing it up with an 8.17 to comprehensively shut down Australia’s Adam Robertson.
While the Hawai‘i surfers dominated the day, the Australians, who had been so strong through the early rounds suffered in a big way. Five surfers came into the final 16 and all were bundled out in one of the most surprising results in ASP WQS surfing for a long time.
Drew Courtney, the final Australian knocked out yesterday spoke of the surprising result saying: “We’ve been nailed for sure. In such excellent waves that really do suit us I thought for sure most of us would have won through to the Quarterfinals today, but it wasn’t to be. I wouldn’t read too much into it. I think we were just a little unlucky and we’ll bounce back and there’ll be more of us in the quarters in South Africa at the next event than anyone else — just watch.”
Leonardo Neves finished off the day with another huge win, posting the event’s second 10 point perfect score to advance over Australian Drew Coutney.
With the waves relentlessly perfect at the Pasta Point line-up, organizers optimized conditions for the surfers in this all important event, extending heats to 30 minutes and stopping heats through the occasional wind squall which ensured a quality eight man-on-man round of 16.
