Dane Reynolds, nine-five foam ride at Backdoor, Hawaii

Yesterday, Dane Reynolds surfed against Kai Otton, a heat in which he scored 17.00 points (a 7.50 and the wave pictured here, a 9.50). It came shortly before he posted a 17.83 combined heat total against Adriano De Souza. Solid performances at Pipe and Backdoor, by anyone’s standards. And, especially from a man who isn’t particularly known for riding solid waves. But as Kelly said of him, Dane’s always quick to adapt to any surfing situation. When asked about switching gears between freesurfing and contest surfing, Dane made a good point – while he hasn’t been on the world tour, he’s been present at a surprising number of contests.

“It’s kinda funny, I’ve been competing so much this year still,” said the Venturan. “It’s kinda crazy. I’m not, like, collecting points or on tour, per se, but I’ve done a lot of events. And I don’t think there’s much shifting of gears really, especially for this ’cause you’re just trying to make do with what comes to you. As far as performance goes, say if I’m going to do the US Open or something like that, I guess the only difference is that you just really try to get a board that feels natural. That’s the biggest difference. ‘Cause sometimes there’s boards that do weird stuff, like releases and stuff, and that can be good for filming. But you don’t want any surprises in a heat.”

In his his acceptance speech for best video performance at the Surfer Poll Awards (for Dear Suburbia), Dane said that he has traditionally approached things with one foot in and one foot out, so that if he fails he could blame only giving it half his effort. When asked if he’s ever gonna put two feet back in the jersey thing, he was coy but interesting: “Well that’s it, I’m trying to pick the right events and put two feet in,” he said. “Really commit to the events and try to do my best when I’m there, instead of… when I was on tour, I felt like I was kinda, ‘fifth place? stoked.’ I guess I still put a lot of emphasis on each individual heat, I always put a lot of pressure on myself to surf well, but I’m just trying to do the events I really wanna do, and I’m stoked that Vans put me in this.”