The WSL Just Revealed Its 2022 Finals Location

It’s Lower Trestles. There, saved you a scroll.

Surprised, bemused, slightly agitated? Yeah, us too. Here’s how it went down…

Back in 2021, the WSL announced that the 2022 Championship Tour would consist of 10 regular season events and one WSL Finals event at a unique venue.

Prior to today’s announcement, the regular-season schedule looked like this:

• Pipeline, Hawai’i – January 29 – February 10
• Sunset, Hawai’i – February 11 – 23
• Peniche, Portugal – March 3 – 13
• Bells Beach, Australia – April 10 – 20
• Margaret River, Western Australia – April 24 – May 4
  
  Mid-Season Cut – 36-man and 18-woman fields reduced to 24-man and 12-woman fields.
  
• G-Land, Indonesia – May 28 – June 6
• Trestles, USA – June 15 – 22
• Saquarema, Brazil – June 27 – July 4
• Jeffreys Bay, South Africa – July 9 – 18
• Teahupo’o, Tahiti – August 11 – 21
  
  WSL Finals – location unknown

For months, surf fans have speculated about where the WSL Finals event would be held in 2022. Using the only rule the WSL provided — that the Finals location can’t be on the regular-season schedule — some of the most common guesses included Lakey Peak, Macaronis, Barra de la Cruz, and Cloudbreak.

But none of these spots ended up being selected, as the WSL secretly altered course sometime over the last few months, taking Lower Trestles off the regular-season schedule and elevating it once again to the WSL Finals venue.

Trestles’ slot on the regular-season schedule was subsequently replaced by El Salvador’s Punta Roca, rounding the year out to 10 full CT events before the Final in September.

The WSL also announced today that just one event will be dropped from a surfer’s scoreline prior to the mid-year cut, and none thereafter. In other words, nine of the 10 regular-season events will count toward a surfer’s end-of-season scoreline, as compared to the two events that are dropped in a typical CT season.

If you want to learn more about these decisions and why the WSL made them, click here to read an interview by our Editor in Chief, Big Dick Power Surfer, with WSL Commissioner Jessi Miley Dyer.

Or if you lack a Stab Premium account, just hop onto this week’s podcast and get the news delivered straight to your earholes. It’s free and, dare I say, not the worst way to spend an hour+ of your workweek.

Here are some of the topics discuss on this episode of The Drop:
– the new WSL Finals venue (2:20)
– Caity Simmers turns down CT spot (12:10)
– VTCS update (15:00)
– Backdoor Shootout insights (22:10)
– All Your Heroes Follow Me (28:00)
– Kelly Story (29:40)
– Surf Sin (36:30)
– The Stab CUSP (47:00)
– Mike and Stace’s Rookie Picks (51:30) of The Drop:

You can find The Drop on Soundlcoud, Spotify, and Apple Pods under ‘Stab Podcasts’.