We'll always prefer less squat and more thrust in Jordy's surfing.
Breaking: Jordy Smith Too Big For Wavepool!
The big man is currently dissecting which boards will work best for him in the pool.
Have you ever been discriminated against because of your size?
For me, always.
Rollercoasters, unicycles, long-legged females -- you name it, I was too small to ride.
That’s why I was so damn excited when Kelly dropped his new wave pool tech. Everybody else’s chest-high was my head-and-a-half, giving a 5’5” frame a distinct advantage in the tub. I hardly have to crouch for the barrel!
But not every surfer is so lucky. Take Jordy Smith for example, who at a burly six-foot-three has admitted to his difficulties out at Surf Ranch.
“It’s just too small for me out there,” Jordy told us in the aftermath of the Future Classic event, last November.
“Especially on the lefts. I can’t really fit in the barrel, and it’s hard to do proper turns on the steep sections.”
In the past two seasons, Jordy has finished in the top four of the Men’s Championship Tour, making him an obvious selection to lead Team World’s international fruity platter, in this weekend’s forthcoming Founders’ Cup.
However, it could be argued that Jordy is the surfer very least-suited to the particular venue, seeing as how his body (and board) quite frankly don’t fit the size and shape of the manufactured wave.
Check out this clip below, wherein Jordy traded out his “normal” boards to sample a weird Tomo shape, off the Firewire-filled racks at the Surf Ranch. However, we've seen a few other clips of Jordy ripping one of his "normal" boards. The tube, however, is still too small for the man (more on this to come).
Jordy's been sampling different sleds to see what works best for him at the Ranch. He's going to opt for his normal quiver for the rights and the Tomo shape for the left. This ride features timing a few beats off, the tube ride mediocre, and despite its cropped nose, the board still slightly too big for turns. He nearly saved his score, ignoring screams to pull-in to what Jordy’s knows is too tight a slot, opting instead for a robust alley-oop, but caught his nose yet again and was unable to ride away.
And while these criticisms might seem harsh, I must stress that these shortcomings are not Jordy’s fault. The same oversized frame that has made his surfing shine at J-Bay, Bells, and Sunset has left him painfully handicapped at Slater’s (relatively) pint-sized pool.
