Tyler Wright Won The Women’s World Title Today At Honolua Bay

It’s grey skies and flash flood warnings across the state of Hawaii today. Belching river mouths, brown water, blustery winds. Building swell on every shore but South. The Maui Women’s Pro saw a delayed start, the action kicking into gear just after noon.

Great waves, some amazing moments. Top tier performances, etc.

But the long lulls played hell with excitement levels. 

As a live event there were moments that felt interminable. It’s hard to amp up when there are ten-minute breaks in the action. But tightened up, distilled down, it will make for a truly entertaining package. It’s a day that will make for an excellent highlight reel. 

Brisa fucking Hennessy is gonna be somebody someday. The young wildcard from Kailua spent her time in the event doing what kids do. Taking inspiration from, and improving upon, the ones who came before. Knocked out Coco to start the day (slightly disappointing due to my deep love for the entire Ho genome). Eventually she went out to an in-form Tyler Wright when the nerves took hold and Brisa started making simple errors.

Hennessy’s results will only improve as her confidence and ability continue to grow. Still, Hennessy’s penultimate turn of the event was a thing of beauty. A long swooping high speed cutback, pure stylish perfection. Not enough to squash Wright’s title hopes, but more than enough to make you drool. If I ran a brand I’d be looking to lock her into a long term contract right now. Before she makes the tour and her price inflates.

But yeah, Tyler Wright. Surfing smart and powerful, semi-injured but still stronger than pretty much anyone in the pack, Wright officially backed up her World Title, adding another ornament to the family mantlepiece, to taunt the her dear brothers forever. 

Your 2017 World Champ, Tyler Wright.

Photography

Poullenot/WSL

Lima’s another name, hardly a new one, that surfed well through most of the day. High speed rail work, some impressive barrel riding. You have to appreciate her willingness to go for broke in tight moments. If she could up her success rate on the high risk stuff she’d smash straight through the draw.

Steph Gilmore surfed better than Lima. Much better. Stephanie Gilmore surfed her best. Silvana hardly embarrassed herself, but she fell victim to the lulls, while Gilmore grabbed everything on offer and tore it to bits.

The forthcoming Wright v Gilmore heat should be something special, assuming conditions cooperate.

Good sweet god damn, did Moore surf well against Weston-Webb! Carissa found the first real barrel of the event, a 9.4 which felt a tad high considering she more or less blew the first section. But she backed it up with some solid work and had TWW sewn up with more than ten minutes left.

Perhaps it was the fact that her title hopes were dead, but Moore looked visibly deflated during her quarterfinal heat against Bronte Macaulay. Like she’d given up, totally uninterested in making it into the semis. It was a somewhat astounding performance.  Moore is a head and shoulders better surfer than Macaulay, if gambling on surfing was more popular I might suspect that the fix was in.

So, yeah, it was a nice World Champ-crowning day. Slow as all hell, but the good moments were more than worth the effort. You might want to head over the heat analyzer and spend a minute clicking through the scoring rides.