It’s been a period of significant change for the WSL. First they had to cancel the entire 2020 Championship Tour because of COVID-19. Then the 2021 season began in Hawaii, which for years has been home to the season-ending events at which the two world champions are found and crowned. That has left an unavoidable hole at the end of the calendar, and the WSL has filled it not just with a new tournament, but with a new event.
Typically the winner of the Championship Tour is simply the surfer who accumulates the most points over the course of the season. Sometimes this means the entire season comes down to the wire in Hawaii, others it means a world champion has been decided prior to the final event. In 2021, the latter possibility has been removed from the equation, with the last event of the year to be the sole determinant of who wins the title.
Of course, only a select few will be invited to the event so as to avoid rendering the previous ten months of competition entirely irrelevant. The top five on both the men’s and women’s tours after the first nine events of the season will earn a spot at Trestles, and throughout the course of a single tournament will compete for the title of world champion.
The event will take place in September, with the tournament window to run from the 8th until the 17th of that month. According to the WSL, this is a ‘choice time of year for solid Southern Hemisphere swells to light up the cobblestone point’. It’s not specified whether they will attempt to run the tournament in its entirety in just a single day, but with only five men and five women competing presumably that will be the intention. This gives event organisers the ability to wait for the best conditions possible until they send the surfers out.
The home of this new event, Trestles was for a long time a staple of the Championship Tour, with the Hurley Pro taking place there every year between 2002 and 2017. In the last three years, however, it has been a notable absentee from the schedule, but with Rip Curl sponsoring this new event it’s little surprise that it would take place at what they term one of ‘our home beaches’.
The wave is one of the most high-performance in the world, known for its long, stretched out right-hand walls which are suitable for surfers of various styles. Presumably that was one of the reasons, aside from the Rip Curl sponsorship, that it was chosen as the destination for this event – were it held at a wave which favours one particular element of surfing, such as the barrels of Pipeline or Teahupo’o, it would likely give too much of an advantage to certain competitors over others. Imagine how many titles John John would accumulate if the winner-takes-all finals day was held outside his childhood home at Pipe every year.
Inevitably there will be plenty of conjecture about whether this is truly the best way to determine the world champion. Many will no doubt say that a one-off event reduces the importance of the rest of the season, with the likelihood of someone who wasn’t necessarily the best-performed surfer throughout the course of the year being crowned world champion substantially increased. Presumably this will be a common argument, and indeed it does appear to be the view of many fans of the league.
As always there is an alternate perspective though, and the WSL and fans of the format would argue that this concern is somewhat offset by the fact that only the top five men and women will be invited to compete. There are other benefits to this kind of tournament as well. Though the previous format was undoubtedly a fairer way to judge the world champion, it did often throw up a situation in which the world champion had already been decided prior to the final event, something which invariably takes away a little from the excitement. This way, there is a guarantee that the tour will come down to the wire, and to win the world title surfers will need to produce quality surfing under significant pressure.
Maybe it’s a contrived way to make that pressure, but regardless of which side you’re on the format is here to stay. It was announced that Rip Curl’s title sponsorship of the competition is part of a three-year partnership with surfing’s governing body, so the one-off format to decide the two world champions is set to become a regular feature of the tour – at least for the next three years. Whether it will be held at Trestles on an annual basis wasn’t actually confirmed by either company, but as mentioned above, given the suitability of the wave for all surfers on the tour, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see it stay in San Clemente.
The announcement wraps up a big few months for Rip Curl, who have played a key role in getting the WSL back up and running in 2021 despite the multitude of hiccups they’ve been faced with. The iconic brand was also recently announced as the naming sponsor for three of the four upcoming tournaments which will form part of the extended Australian leg of the tour. The events at Bells Beach and Snapper Rocks will both be absent for various logistical reasons, and have been replaced by new events at Newcastle, Narrabeen and Rottnest Island; all of which are to be sponsored by Rip Curl.
Clearly it’s shaping up as a unique season in the WSL, with many staples of the World Tour missing out. Whether the events that replace them will serve up the same standard of waves remains to be seen, but after a year with barely any pro surfing, the season is sure to generate plenty of excitement regardless.
