John Florence, nose-in fins-out at Huntington Beach, CA

John Florence got a little unwell towards the end of his US Open of Surfing campaign in Huntington Beach recently. If he hadn’t, things mighta been different for the Hawaiian. But, as it were, he met eventual contest-winner Jules Wilson in the quarters and the pair surfed the most wave-starved heat of the whole event, hands-down. Such is surfing, though – what could’ve been one of the top two most explosive heats of the contest (along with Dane Reynolds and Kelly Slater’s quarter match) ended with Jules scraping into an insider and squeezing a shorebreak air to barely slip by John. But John certainly had his moments at Huntington, as he does everywhere. Of layback finners like this, there were many. Now think about some of the moments we’ll seen from this pigdog beast in seven days’ time at Chopes.