There’s Something Rumbling In Indonesia

I woke to a rumble last night.

My first thought? A Sumatran tiger prowling around and clawing at one of the many 5’7″ bodies scattered around the property. Eh. Too far-fetched. It must be the swell then, validating all those whispers from West Oz, forcing the jagged reef out front into a tremble. Actually…that’s not supposed to be hitting yet. Then I realised it was some dude snoring through the walls of my neighbouring room.

Oh well. It can be hard to distinguish between dream and reality here in this psychedelic jungle.

The 2017 Quiksilver Young Guns Surf Final hasn’t even begun yet, but it has already gotten interesting. Kyuss King, Dwight Pastrana, Sammy Pupo, Kael Walsh, Kehu Butler, Sandy Whitaker and Kade Matson are all here, drinking coconut water straight from the trees and knifing through the area’s finest lineups. It’s like Lord Of The Flies meets Morning Of The Earth but with air-revos. Justin Becret was supposed to be here too, but unfortunately got injured in a motorbike accident last week. We’re thinking about you, buddy.

It took the Young Guns a while to get here — both literally and figuratively. Literally, meaning it took most of them a ridiculous amount of hours to arrive at Sumatra Surf Resort. Figuratively, because Young Guns began as an Instagram contest with over 1000 entrants. Thirty of them were handpicked by Mikey Wright, Zeke Lau and Jeremy Flores based on airs, turns and combos. Mikey chose the top 10 freshest breaths of air, Zeke chose the best turns and Jeremy picked the best combos.

Get acquainted with the 8 best under-18 groms in the world right now.

The Top 30 from then made edits and you, the public, voted to send the Top 5 to the final. The judges each picked their personal favourites (one each) to join the final too, because don’t you think Zeke knows power surfing when he sees it? Now, after all that, they’re here. But only one will swipe the $10K purse.

Here’s how it’ll go down.

There will be no jerseys. No priority. Just raw surfing. Each day, each kid will surf four 30-minute heats. They’ll try to fulfill the three categories that got them here — air, combo, turn — and get scored out of ten for each. They can hit the categories in any order, in any heat, and can even check multiple boxes on one wave. So after two hours of surfing, everyone will have a score out of 30 based off of three waves.

The rules are simple: There’ll be three days of two-hour sessions, and then it’s on to the hour-long super final. The top four surfers paddle out. One comes in $10k richer. There’s one rule: The best surfing wins.

You’ll find all the updates you need right here, on Stab’s site and Gram.