Jordy Smith, The Mr Price Pro, Ballito, South Africa

“It’s a quick little warm-up before J-Bay starts,” Jordy Smith says of the Mr Price Pro, Ballito, in his home country of South Africa. Jordy’s not too interested in Prime events, but says there’ll be a couple on his radar this year, especially with the ASP’s new ranking system.

“I’m gonna do a few Prime events this year, but only the ones that are on my home turf,” says Jordy. “And possibly Hawaii, I guess. It’s just so convenient, so why not? With the one-world ranking, it’s more important to do the Prime events now and there’s more dream tour guys doing them. For the guys that aren’t doing too great in the first half of the year, I think it’s important to do Primes, to try and keep their seed up.”

In many ways, some ASP Prime events can be more interesting to watch than WT events. Think about it: Y’got 96 of the almost-best surfers in the world, desperate to rise with the cream and add another zero to their contracts. Which can result in some very high performance. But then, when y’got someone like Jordan Smith in the event, the performance is always gonna be high.

Long after the wind had turned onshore yesterday, Jordy cruised through the final heat of the afternoon with a 5.83 and a 5.53. The earlier heats had been barrel after barrel, but this large hurl was some flavour to end the day.

For more of Ryan’s awesome photography work, jump over here.