Nine months and ten events after the season kicked off in a historic contest at Pipeline, the five women who will compete for the 2022 world title have been decided. Carissa Moore, Johanne Defay, Tatiana Weston-Webb, Brisa Hennessy and Steph Gilmore will head to Trestles in September for the WSL Finals, so let’s take an in-depth look at how each of them got there, their careers to date, and the task they have ahead to end the season triumphant.
#1: Carissa Moore (Hawaii)
Her Season
The dominant woman in world surfing over recent years, it’s little surprise to see Carissa Moore finish the season atop the world rankings. This is the third consecutive season that she’s done it, and with 57,670 ranking points, she did so relatively comfortably, too, finishing more than 7,000 points ahead of Defay in second.
Interestingly, the Hawaiian dominated the world rankings despite winning just a solitary event all year. It was her consistency which enabled her to hold onto the yellow jersey for much of the year, with three finals losses accompanying that win at the Oi Rio Pro, as well as a couple more semi-finals appearances.
Her Career
Moore is no stranger to world title contention. The 30-year-old has been crowned world champion on five occasions already, including the last two seasons, and would no doubt have her sights set on the record held by Steph Gilmore and Layne Beachley for most world titles on the women’s side of the draw, each of whom has seven.
The Task Ahead
As the number one seed, Moore is in the box seat to add a sixth world crown to her trophy cabinet. She’ll get to watch on all day as the lower seeds battle it out for a spot in the Title Match, where they’ll have the unenviable task of needing to beat Moore to win the world championship. The Title Match is best-of-three heats, so Moore just needs to beat whoever makes it there twice, and she’ll retain her position atop world surfing.
#2: Johanne Defay (France)
Her Season
Halfway through the season, Johanne Defay’s chances of finishing in the top five were under a major cloud, let alone the top two. She was consistent, at least, in the first five events, making the quarterfinals at all of them, but she failed to get any further on even one occasion. As a result she found herself in eighth halfway through the year, though so tight was the leaderboard at that point, she was less than 1,000 points below Isabella Nichols in fourth.
Her season turned around in a big way at the Roxy Pro G-Land, the sixth event of the year, when she won and earned 10,000 points, subsequently moving all the way up to third. Her good form continued thereafter; she followed up that result with a semi-final appearance in El Salvador and another finals appearance at the Oi Rio Pro, which was enough to lock her into second despite an indifferent last couple of events of the season.
Her Career
Defay has been a consistent presence in the top ten for close to a decade, but she probably hasn’t really looked like a genuine title threat until this year. Her fourth place finish last year was the best of her career to date, and this season, aged 28, she has taken another step and is surfing as well as she ever has. This is comfortably the best chance she has ever had to win a world title.
The Task Ahead
Defay will have the luxury of sitting back and watching the first couple of heats unfold before she has to hit the water. She’ll face the winner of Match 2, who she’ll need to beat in one single heat. If she does that, she’ll then head to the best-of-three Title Match against Moore.
#3: Tatiana Weston-Webb (Brazil)
Her Season
Weston-Webb had an unusual first half of the year. In four of the first five events, she was knocked out in the Round of 16; in the other, the MEO Pro Portugal, she won. And just as well, too, because even with that victory she was still sitting in tenth place in the world rankings and just barely scraped past the inaugural mid-season cut.
That near miss seemed to spark last year’s runner-up into action though, because she went on a tear in the back half of the year. She made the semi-finals in four of the final five events and added a second win of the season when she triumphed at the Corona Open J-Bay, and those results helped her fly up the leaderboard into third place.
Her Career
At just 26, it feels like Weston-Webb has been on the Championship Tour for far longer than her age would suggest. She finished seventh in 2015 and has bettered that in five of the six seasons since, and last year was by far the closest she has come to winning a world title. She finished second at the conclusion of the shortened season, and in the inaugural WSL Finals made it through to the Title Match against Moore. And she went agonisingly close to winning, too, falling from a wave which could easily have handed her the world title in the dying minutes of the third heat.
The Task Ahead
The goofy-footer will have a little more to do than she did last year, having finished one spot further back. She’ll need to win Match 2 against either Steph Gilmore or Brisa Hennessy, and Match 3 against Defay, before beating Moore in the Title Match to earn her maiden world crown.
#4: Brisa Hennessy (Costa Rica)
Her Season
Brisa Hennessy is the most surprising member of the top five, having enjoyed comfortably her best ever year to finish in fourth. In a large part that’s courtesy of a hot start to the season which saw her win the Hurley Pro Sunset Beach and make a semi at Bells, which was enough to have her wearing the yellow jersey halfway through the season.
From there, however, she gradually dropped down the leaderboard and seemed likely to fall outside the top five. From the fifth through to the ninth event she failed to make it past the quarterfinals and was twice knocked out in the Elimination Round, meaning heading to the final event in Tahiti she was perched perilously in fifth. With her season on the line, however, she excelled, making it through to the final to not only make the top five, but leap ahead of Gilmore into fourth.
Her Career
As mentioned, Hennessy hasn’t previously been a world title threat, understandable given that she is just 22 years old. This is only her third full season on tour; in the previous two, she’s finished a long way back, in 11th in 2019 and 15th in 2021, so she has minimal experience surfing with a world title on the line.
The Task Ahead
Though she jumped into fourth on the back of her runner-up performance at the Outerknown Tahiti Pro, Hennessy still has it all ahead of her if she’s to become a surprise world champion. She’ll start things off in Match 1 against seven-time world champ Gilmore, before needing to beat first Weston-Webb then Defay in one-off heats, and finally coming up in the best-of-three Title Match against Moore.
#5: Steph Gilmore
Her Season
Steph Gilmore had an inauspicious start to the season, missing the first event at Pipeline due to Covid and then falling in the Round of 16 at the next, and by the halfway mark of the year she’d only made it past the quarterfinals on one occasion. That was just enough for her to scrape into the top ten and avoid the mid-season cut, but she had her work cut out to work her way into the top five.
And work she did. After another middling result at G-Land, she broke through for a pivotal win at the Surf City El Salvador Pro which saw her jump from seventh into third in the world rankings. She ended the season with a mixed bag of results – one Round of 16 exit, one quarterfinal defeat and a semi-final appearance – which saw her drop down the rankings a little, but nonetheless she qualified for the WSL Finals with a healthy buffer of nearly 3,000 points over sixth-placed Lakey Peterson.
Her Career
Aged 34, Gilmore might be past her best, but she has championship experience in spades. In fact, with the exception of Kelly Slater, she has as much of it as anyone in history. The lanky Australian is the equal most successful female surfer in history with seven world titles, a number she shares with Layne Beachley, and if she can defy the odds to win her eighth this year she will be sharing no more.
The Task Ahead
The path to a world title is the same for Gilmore as it is for Hennessy. She needs to beat every other surfer in the top five, beginning, of course, with the Costa Rican herself. If she succeeds in that matchup, she’ll move on to face first Weston-Webb, then Defay, and finally Moore in the Title Match.
So there we have it – the five confirmed starters for the second ever WSL Finals, the event window for which opens up on the 8th of September and runs through to the 16th. In Carissa Moore and Steph Gilmore, two of the most successful surfers in history will look to add to their already bulging trophy cabinets, while three uncrowned competitors on the hunt for a maiden world title will do everything they can to stop them.
