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In the early ‘90s, Margaret River was an unofficial “prime”
destination on the ASP World Tour (a particularly riveting Surfer Magazine piece titled “Sunday Bloody Sunday” comes to mind).
Now it’s an official 6-star Prime World Qualifying Series (WQS) event, offering
up valuable points for the new ASP Men’s World Ranking. Other more playful (and
in some cases, more suicidal) breaks have taken some of the attention off
Margarets as of late, but last week in front of the largest crowd ever seen here,
an estimated 7000 people, Margaret River got all puffed up and reasserted her
relevance in the scheme of pro surfing. 30 of the ASP’s 45 World Tour
representatives showed up at the Drug Aware Pro Presented By Rusty frothing for
prime points and a stab at the $20,000 1st-place prize, before Coolie kid Josh
Kerr’s triplet of forehand aerials lifted him out of a combo situation in the
final and boosted him past hometown hucker Taj Burrow, 17.03 – 16.5. Best
of all, Margaret River boasted offshore, absolutely
pumping surf that started out at triple-overhead and came down to a perfectly
puntable four- to six-feet for the final.
Leading up to that, 2001 ASP World
Champion CJ Hobgood bagged a quarter, scoring the previous day’s highest
scoring ride, 9.17, and the day’s highest heat tally, 17.17, in peaking surf. “I love it out there,” Hobgood said. “It’s really like surfing
in Hawaii and there’s so much wave face to work with.” Eventually halted in the quarterfinals by Bede Durbidge, CJ now holds
the #2 spot on the new Men’s World Ranking leader board. Meanwhile,
former ASP World Tour vet and fellow Floridian Cory Lopez loaded up the guns to smoke best bud Chris Ward and
2000 ASP World Champion Sunny Garcia en route to the semis, where he went down
to eventual event champ Kerr. The result propelled Cory from 236th to 26th on
the ASP Men’s World Ranking.
Which is prime position for Cory to get back on tour.
For photos, videos, and full results
of the Drug Aware Pro
presented by Rusty, visit www.DrugAwarePro.com.
For updated ASP
World Rankings, visit www.ASPWorldTour.com.
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