HUNTINGTON BEACH, California (Tuesday, July 14, 2009) – Hurley has just made the unprecedented announcement that first place in the upcoming Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Qualifying Series (WQS) 6-Star U.S. Open of Surfing at Huntington Beach will now be US$100,000, the biggest prize purse in professional surfing’s history.

“Huntington Beach is ground zero for competitive surfing in mainland America, and on the 50th anniversary of major events at the Pier, we’re excited and honored to help bring surfing back to center stage at the U.S. Open,” Evan Slater, Hurley Digital Marketing Manager, said. “This includes attracting the world’s best surfers and making it the significant event it deserves to be.”

The event, which runs at the historic Huntington Beach Pier from July 20 – 26, 2009, has attracted a bevy of the world’s best surfers from the prestigious ASP Dream Tour as well as the top ASP WQS seeds looking to gain valuable qualification points in their respective campaigns for an ASP World Tour berth in 2010.

“Going back to the Op Pro days in the early to mid 80s, the event here at Huntington always seemed larger than life,” Slater said. “Where your heroes performed the unimaginable right in front of you. The waves weren’t the key factor it was the atmosphere. At Rob Machado’s suggestion, who remembers those days clearly as a kid, he felt a first-place incentive like this would help rekindle that electric atmosphere.”

Hurley’s unparalleled financial incentive has caught the global attention of surfers, fans, industry powerbrokers and the ASP.

“Hurley already has a reputation with Hurley Pro Trestles in San Clemente, providing one of the best events on the planet for both surfers and fans,” Brodie Carr, ASP International CEO, said. “This year, we have started early with Hurley’s $100k 1st place prize purse at the upcoming U.S. Open – the biggest winner’s prize in surfing history!”

Hurley is no stranger to financial contributions to the world’s best surfers Bob Hurley, Founder and Chairman of Hurley International, famously upped first prize at last season’s inaugural Hurley Pro Trestles (an ASP World Tour event) from US$30,000 to US$75,000 moments before the Final. When asked if their prize money incentive at the upcoming ASP WQS meant the potential for an even bigger gesture at this year’s Hurley Pro Trestles in September, the industry power player remained guarded.

“We can’t comment on that now,” Slater said. “But let’s just say that we like surprises.”

The ASP WQS 6-Star Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing will be held at California’s famed Huntington Beach Pier from July 20 – 26, 2009.

The event will be web LIVE at www.usopenofsurfing.com

For more information, log onto www.aspworldtour.com or www.aspnorthamerica.org

story from ASP

Coming from transworld piece it looks like this rumor has some teeth…

We’re not one to start rumors, well maybe we are, but this isn’t necessarily a rumor. Kelly Slater is working on a new pro surfing tour that could start as early as next year. From what we’ve read via a Phil Jarrat story and an In Surf News piece, Kelly’s long-time manager Terry Hardy is hard at work putting the final touches on this puppy.

From what Phil Jarrat says in his piece on the Noosa Journal website, the tour “will consist of eight events offering more than a million bucks prize money, with first round losers walking away with $40,000.” That would mean that by just showing up at every event, the last place finisher would bag a $320,000 salary for eight events. Quite a hefty paycheck for all lasts, especially compared to the current ASP salary for a year of all 33rds in 2009 equaling $47,000 ($4,700 for a 33rd and ten events).

For this to work, Kelly would need to have some major backers on board to up the ante, which according to Jarrat and In Surf News, he does. The two stories both go on to say that ESPN will be covering all eight events.

In Surf News goes on to say that there will be 15 other top pros joining Slater – how they will be selected and the competition contrast to the ASP are yet to be seen. For all the evolution that’s been going on in the water in years of late, maybe it’s finally time things are advancing in the sport as a whole – more money for the world’s best, fresh formats, better competition, and world-wide coverage? We’ll just have to wait and see.

the following is Phil Jarrat’s Noosa Journal story:

NOOSA: While Kelly Slater was rising from the ashes of three consecutive losses to win in Brazil last week, his manager, Terry Hardy, was apparently in Los Angeles nailing the lid (ashes, coffin lids,what’s going on here!) on a megabucks breakaway world surfing tour.
I say apparently because at the time of writing I could find no media coverage of the matter, and neither Slater nor Hardy responded to my requests for information, which proves that it’s true, right? Anyway, my sources are reliable and highly-placed, so remember where you read it first.
The tour, with nine-times world champion Slater as its figurehead, will consist of eight events offering more than a million bucks prize money, as opposed to the current $US300,000 on the ASP Dream Tour, with first round losers walking away with $US40,000. With the worst performer guaranteed $US320,000 a year to show up, this would mean that surfing’s elite could at last feel relaxed about giving their all to the tour. When you consider the case of Straddie’s Bede Durbidge, who started his year without a sponsor and finished it at number 2 to Kelly, that means a lot.
The word on the tour is that all events will be covered by cable sports network ESPN and packaged for global sales, which sounds eerily familiar. But what hasn’t been spelled out yet is how it will differ from the ASP tour, and knowing Slater’s views on this, I suggest it will be very different. For years Kelly has been a severe critic of the ASP’s judging criteria (with more than 40 tour wins under the belt, I wouldn’t be rocking the boat, but there you go) and even put on his own invitational event in Fiji to showcase his more adventurous ideas. Over time, the ASP has actually adopted some of them, like overlapping heats, but the pace of change has never been fast enough for Kelly.
His personal view of the “dream tour’’ is a small number of elite surfers competing in high quality waves with a license to thrill, the judging criteria based solely on “raising the bar’’ of surfing performance.
In a sense, this is turning the clock back to pro surfing’s roots in events like 1971’s Golden Breed Expression Session, in which the judges simply watched the guys surf all day and then declared the coolest dude the winner. But there has also long been a feeling amongst the top pros that the gulf between contest surfing and creative surfing has been widening. Interesting times ahead for the struggling ASP, which has governed pro surfing through thick and thin for more than 30 years.
Vertical integration
Good news for Bob McTavish fans. The long-awaited Going Vertical, the movie that finally tells the real story behind Bob’s development of the Fantastic Plastic Machine back in 1967, is nearing completion. I was down at Brooms Head this week for a final round of filming with Bob and other protagonists, including John and Paul Witzig, under the direction of David Bradbury, the Academy Award-winning documentarian who made Frontlinenf. Producer Robert Raymond tells me that the film should be released before Christmas.
Most surfers know bits and pieces of the story of the so-called “shortboard revolution’’, but few know of the intense rivalry between McTavish and Hawaiian shaping guru Dick Brewer, who also lays claims to being the father of the revolution. In a fascinating, funny, and strangely touching 90 minutes, Going Vertical gets into the heads and shaping bays of these two seminal figures in surfing.

Go Rosie Go!
Lip-bashing local longboarder Rosie Locke jetted off to France this week, with some timely assistance from her fellow members of the Noosa Malibu Club, to contest the Roxy World Women’s Longboard Championships at La Cote des Basques, Biarritz. This is Rosie’s second shot at the title in France, and if recent form is any guide, the effervescent law student will be a major threat to leading lights Jen Smith and Chelsea Williams. With Rosie’s mum Susie being one of the NMC’s hardest workers, the club was only too happy to chip in for the trip.

San Onofre State Beach — On July 11, 2009 Brian Hovnanian and companion Lance E. were Stand Up Paddleboarding at the reef South of Dog Patch, San Onofre State Beach. It was 8:30 AM and they had been on the water 1.5 hours. It was sunny with little or no wind and an air temperature in the low-70s Fahrenheit. The ocean was calm and glassy with water visibility 4 – 5 feet and a temperature in the upper-60s Fahrenheit. They were about 50 yards from shore over water about 6 feet deep with a sandy, rocky bottom. No marine mammals were observed in the area. Hovnanian reported: “I was paddle surfing at the reef South of Dog Patch, with one other paddle surfer, Lance E. I have had many shark sittings of 5′ to 6′ sharks jumping all of the way out of the water at this same place for the last 2 months, as I paddle surf their a couple times a week. I had not seen any today and did not see this one coming. We both had just ridden waves in from a nice set. As I was paddling out, my friend was paddling about 30 feet behind me when all of a sudden it felt like something hit the back of my SUP, then slammed into the back of my left calf, forcing me to lose my balance and I feel backwards. The shark was now on top of my SUP and I was lying backwards on top of the shark, as it was on my board. The shark slithered off the board back into the water. This all happened so fast, and I believe when I fell on the shark, it scared it and it tried to get away from the board and me. I still had my paddle in my hand, jumped to my feet on my board and looked at my leg, to notice nothing had happened to my body or board. By now my friend had paddled quickly to me and could not believe what he had just seen right in front of him. He made sure I was OK, luckily I was, then we paddled back out to the line-up and caught a wave from the next set and paddled in thinking how lucky I was. I’m not sure what kind of shark it was, but it did have a gray back and white underside and was about 5 feet in length. It might have been a Mako or White Shark.” By definition an unprovoked shark attack is “any physical contact between a shark and human, or piece of equipment being utilized by a human, without any know provocative action by the subject which might cause the shark to strike out.” This is the second authenticated unprovoked shark attack for 2009 from the Pacific Coast of North America. Please report any shark sighting, encounter, or attack to the Shark Research Committee.

story via surfline