Opinion: The US Open Is Failing Women’s Surfing
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So, the US Open is on right now. You probably knew that. As an Australian surf fan, it’s likely that you’re not watching it. Fair enough. The time difference is brutal. You might not even be checking the results or highlights in the morning either, and why would you? The QS is as much big American sideshow circus, with skateboarding and BMX demos and brand activations/activities for the American summer that are no use to you from cold Australian coasts, as it is a surf comp. On top of that, the surf is usually trash.
But as Australian surf fans we should be staying up and watching the event, or at the very least checking our phones for the results as we roll over in the morning, because what’s easy to forget about this is that yeah, it’s just a QS for the men, but for the women it’s a bonafide big time Championship Tour event. And as we’re sleeping, we have surfers at positions one, two, and three – Tyler Wright, Sally Fitzgibbons, and Stephanie Gilmore – battling tooth and nail amongst the Huntington close-outs, and QS journeymen, for a World Title!
In the four years since the regime change of the ASP, the standout improvement made to professional surfing has been the way women’s surfing is handled and celebrated. More events in better waves, more prize money, a dedicated WSL commissioner on female surfing’s side in Jesse Miley Dyer – there’s never been a better time to not be a man on the Championship Tour, just ask anyone who surfed on it in the 80s, 90s, or 2000s. The old philosophy of, “The surf is looking pretty rubbish, so we’ll put the men on hold and send the girls out there,” is slowly diminishing, and that’s great. But it’s never been more prevalent and obvious than at Huntington, where a men’s QS runs alongside the world’s best women trying to win World Titles and create history.
Earlier this week, the 2016 event winner Tatiana Weston Webb was interviewed by Surfer Magazine, commenting: “I don’t really mind it, especially because the U.S. Open has been such a staple in competitive surfing for so long. Just as long as the waves aren’t flat. If there is something to surf, I’ll be stoked. But I do feel like they could get a better venue for our surfing because we’re definitely qualified to surf better, bigger waves.”
So “As long as the waves aren’t flat…” is the bar for a successful US Open of Surfing, which is far too low, right?
The morning of Day 3 actually looked pretty good. There was swell, and it was as glassy as we’ve ever seen Huntington on a broadcast. After a restart, Joanne Defay won the first heat of the day and booked herself a spot in the quarters. “It’s such a relief, it feels so good,” she said in her post heat interview, before adding, unprompted, “The conditions are… like we have really clean and good conditions, and big, but it’s kind of closing out sometimes, so it was hard to get scores, like two turns, like a very good finish and stuff.”
Tatiana Weston Webb had similar comments after her Round 4 heat win over Nikki Van Dijk.
“It was really really tough out there, like I’m not gonna lie … I feel like the judges are just expecting too much of us right now, because conditions look perfect, but it’s really really tough.”
Sure, surf events get skunked with tough conditions all the time, the problem here however is that this is the best the event has looked in yonks.
And while the world no.2, six time World Champion, one of the all time greats in Stephanie Gilmore had lost, packed up, and gone home, 37 year old former CT surfer who fell off tour in 2011, Tommy Whitaker (presumably at Huntington primarily for his role as coach for Oakley surfers) was suiting up a day later for his Round 2 heat in the same event. Isn’t that kinda weird?
And if you watch the 2016 final day highlights, it’s the men’s final that gets top billing, ending with Filipe’s triumphant win over Tatiana’s, despite the former meaning so much less to professional surfing.
This doesn’t scream, we love women’s surfing. It factually states that the best women’s surfing in the world has the same value as a men’s QS. And sure, there are probably events where women’s surfing and men’s surfing might not go together all that well – Pipe, Teahupo’o, for example – but to blatantly throw it to the wolves of reforms and one and a half turns of a mediocre beachbreak isn’t okay. The 10,000 points for the winner of the US Open have the exact same value as the 10,000 points the winner gets at Snapper, Fiji, Honolua Bay or anywhere else on tour. And that just doesn’t feel right, either.
The WSL needs to either remove the men’s QS from the US Open, and celebrate the women’s CT on its own dais to a massive in person audience, or it needs to downgrade the CT back to a QS and replace it with a half-decent wave elsewhere. Because right now the discrepancy is weird and gross, more in line with the surfing world we grew up with, and not the one it has slowly evolved to become. It doesn’t belong in 2017, and certainly not in 2018 or beyond.
