31 July, Somewhere, Bali: After an amazing start to the Rip Curl Pro Search at the “secondary” location yesterday, Round Two returned to the “primary” location today where the early morning light illuminated a virtually picture perfect scene of 6 foot lines rolling in and caroming off the reef.
Heat One kicked off at 8 am just short of high tide with local wildcard Komang “Gogo” Sujaya taking on Taj Burrow. Komang seemed a bit nervous after Taj got right to work and smacked the hell out of the lip off of his first wave scoring well. Gogo was reluctant to take any big chances at the start, but eventually he got a few and performed very well, but Taj had him on the ropes early and it was too far to go for a comeback.
The bigger sets were swinging wide or breaking too fast, so wave selection throughout the morning was critical, even for the top surfers in the world. Luckily there were several Sea Doo Jet Ski’s that would come in and pick the surfers up and take them back out to the lineup, as the current was running very strong and would have made it a 5-10 minute paddle after each wave!
Next up was one of the most exciting heats yet. Bede Durbidge, who is ranked Number Two now and is having a great year, took on Rip Curl Australia’s wildcard entry Owen Wright. Bede had the heat will in hand and Owen on the ropes, when Owen incredibly nailed a 9.63 right in front of Bede to lead. To make it an epic, Bede came right back on the next wave with a 9.63 of his own to put the heat away! Was really fun to watch.
Then Rip Curl Indo’s wildcard Made “Garut Widiarta got his chance to see if he could best Adriano De Sousa in Heat Three. He got off to a good start with his first wave and had the lead. After he fell trying to find his way out of a barrel on his second wave, Adriano got to work with a short barrel and a couple of hacks to take the lead.
Garut’s rhythm seemed to get thrown off then, for he fell doing a turn on his next wave and then was out of position for most of the rest of the head, while Adriano went to work racking up more points and winning the heat convincingly.
Another great heat to watch was Bobby Martinez against Bruno Santos. Bobby locked into several super deep tubes and just when you thought he would get toasted he somehow rocketed out the end. He has surfed here several times before, so he knew what he had to do…and he did it!
At 12 noon, MC Mark “Bunga” Clift called a 1.5 hour break to let the conditions settle after a couple of slow heats with less than perfect waves coming through. Then at 1:30 it was called back on but only two more heats were run before Contest Director Damian Hardeman called it off again for the day.
The crew was told to standby on Friday morning in hopes that the conditions will allow the completion of Round Two.
That’s our report for today from the Coca-Cola ISC tour, who is supporting the Rip Curl Pro Search by providing staff and Coca-Cola and Powerade drinks to the surfers, staff, and media.
And remember, you can get all the complete info online, just go to http://live.ripcurl.com/
Pictures:
1. Morning lineup
2. Bede Durbidge
3. Bobby Martinez
4. Made ‘Garut’ Widiarta
5. Komang ‘Gogo’ Sujaya
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