No Contest: The World Tour Misses Lower Trestles And Doesn’t Understand The Freshwater Pro Format

Our culturally ravenous deep dive World Tour series, No Contest, has hit a brisk stride the last month, with a heater from Tahiti, a last-minute mission to Miyazaki for the ISA World Surfing Games, straight into the California leg. 

For this episode of No Connie, the boys started their week-long Golden State residency in San Clemente, hanging with Matt Biolos as he put the finishing touches on pool boards for his sprawling ‘CT roster, as well as the three Freshwater Pro wildcards, Kade Matson, Jett Schilling, and Crosby Colapinto. 

We get a proper San Clemente history lesson from Mayhem before heading north for the rather confusing, but damned entertaining (in person, at least) Freshwater Pro, where we try (and pretty much fail) to make sense of the event’s unique format, and find out who is the biggest poacher/monster in the pool. 

The most radical moment of the Freshwater Pro long weekend: Julian Wilson’s backhand bigspin.

Photography

WSL/VanKirk

Pre-event favorite, Kanoa Igarashi, keeping pace with The Battleship.

Photography

WSL/VanKirk

We filmed part of this episode in Japan, during the ISA World Games in Miyazaki, and got to have a proper long chat with Kelly about the pool, Lower Trestles being off tour, and how everyone is always giving him a hard time about his (perceived) home-field advantage at the pool. 

After admitting he’d been considering blowing off a few of his practice waves for a day at Lowers, we began to ask what was meant to be a fairly harmless question. 

“How psyched are you when this comps over and you can surf the…” 

“Oh, you think I can? Is that what you think? That’s what everybody thinks. No, tell me what people think.”

Turns out, contrary to popular belief, Kelly’s not up there doing laps even remotely as often as you’d expect, and doesn’t seem to appreciate people implying otherwise. 

It also turns out he, like the overwhelming majority of surfers we asked on tour, would of course love Lowers back on, though he’s right in feeling the pool get unfairly compared to the iconic cobblestone skatepark. 

After spending the event poolside, we bolted back south to wash off the long weekend with a Lowers session with Mayhem, Kolohe, Ian Crane, and the wildcard groms. Of course, we couldn’t arrive empty-handed, and lugged down our new favorite bag full of Animal Style double-doubles, a few dozen fries, and spent the last Sunday before the European leg in fine Southern California fashion. 

This is No Contest California.