Occasionally, the proper order of things gets disturbed by an agent of chaos. Kelly Slater is destined to win ASP World Title number 10 and Andy Irons is supposed to find competitive redemption on tour. On day three of the Billabong Pro at J-Bay all of that got turned upside down by South African wildcard Sean Holmes (pictured above).
In round three Holmes slipped past a determined Kelly Slater. Kelly surfed seven waves, but he couldn’t get anything over a 6.8. Holmes took only three waves and was able to nail down a 7.5 and a 5.5 to edge Kelly by .04 handing the ASP World Tour points lead to fellow countryman Jordy Smith.
“Look, Kelly (Slater) is going to belt the score he needs on any wave,” Holmes said. “For me, with my back, I wasn’t going to improve my score on the smaller wave so there was no point in me taking it. That was the tactic I was playing with throughout the heat and I was fortunate that the ocean cooperated with me at the end.”
Slater was typically philosophical.
“It’s a long year ahead,” Slater said. “I think I entered this event two or three heats ahead of Jordy (Smith) and if he wins this event, he’ll be two or three events ahead of me. So I’ve got a month to think about it before the next one. I’ll go home, recharge and focus on Tahiti.” . . . “I never felt in sync here this year,” Slater continued. “I’ve been tired ever since I arrived. I’ve been going to bed at 8pm and waking up at 1am. I’ve been up today for 8 hours already. That said, Sean is always in sync out here at Jeffreys. He knows the spot really well and is always on the best waves.”
But that was not the end of the Sean Holmes wrecking ball. In round four he met Andy Irons. Andy started off the heat with a 8.67 but was not able to match that score again. The one time he came close he got obviously distracted by a water cameraman who was directly in the Andy’s line of fine. Holmes, meanwhile, put down a 7 and an 8.6 to win by .43 of a point.
In the last seconds of the heat it appeared that Andy was paddling in. Instead, he apparently motored over to the water photographer for a confrontation. We heard announcer Luke Stedman say, “Agh,” saw Andy and the photographer face to face in the water and then Billabong cut to a commercial. South African surf magazine ZigZag tweeted that Irons “paddle over and spears board into event photographer who got in the way on a scoring wave.” The only other time the altercation was mentioned was in the highlight show when announcer Ron Blakey said that a frustrated Andy had “splashed some water” on the photographer. Either way, Andy was pissed and with reason.
For all the official ASP details from the rest of the day including Taj Burrow’s 18.87 crushing of Tiago Pires, Dane Reynolds slip past Brett Simpson, and Damien Hobgood’s goofy footed round four domination over current champ Mick Fanning follow the jump.
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