Nat Young Wins Jack’s Pro, Edges Closer To CT Requalification
Nat gets a win after a year of tough losses.
Santa Cruz’s Nat Young won the World Surf League’s Jack’s Surfboards Pro, a QS 1,000 event, in Huntington Beach on Sunday.
Young knocked off Josh Burke of Barbados 14.75-14.50 to claim the title and $2,500 winner’s payout. He now sits on top of the North American Qualifying Series (QS) rankings and is a lock to qualify for the challenger series. The win puts Nat in an extremely strong place to qualify for the 2022 Tour, with only two surfers holding more points than him across the entire QS — Matt Banting and Vasco Ribeiro.
Assuming he get a couple decent results on the Challenger Series, Nat should return to the big leagues at Pipeline this coming January. The win comes after a year of tough losses for Nat, whose mum, Rosie, passed away from cancer in February, a month before he had his first child.
The Jack’s pro, despite its diminutive status as a QS 1000 event had major CT implications and featured the biggest prospects for tour requalification. This is the result of the COVID-forced truncation of the 2020 QS series that saw the number of events shrink from a total of 67 events globally to only five regional events, three of which had been already been surfed in 2020. This left only two contests left to surf this year, the first of which Nat Young won on Sunday.
Because of the new structure of the challenger series, only the top 10 surfers from the North American region will make the cut, which is why the event saw so many big names competing in a QS-1000 event. With only one more event to go, the WRV Outer Banks Pro pres by Pacifico in North Carolina, you can expect the lowly rung QS-1000 events to make for exciting spectating.
Congratulations, Nat Young.
Challenger’s Series 2021
Sept 20-26 – US Open of Surfing – Huntington Beach, California
Oct 2-10 – MEO Vissla Pro Ericiera – Riberia, Ericeira, Portugal
Oct 16-24 – Quiksilver Pro France – Seignosse, Landes, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
Nov 26-Dec 7 – Haleiwa Challenger – Haleiwa, Hawaii, United States
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