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.

Highlights from today’s Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay will be available via www.billabongpro.com

JEFFREYS BAY, South Africa (Monday, July 13, 2009) – Round 1 and the opening two heats of Round 2 of the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay were completed today in clean three-to-five foot (1.5 metre) waves at the legendary South African pointbreak, with the world’s best surfers reveling in the opening day of competition.

Event No. 5 of 10 on the 2009 ASP World Tour, the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay opted to make the most of the conditions on offer today, opting to run the new competition format of man-on-man elimination matches from the outset, completing 18 heats of competition, highlighted with some incendiary performances.

Sean Holmes (ZAF), 31, wildcard at the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay, has a storied history at the event, competing seven times prior, finishing as high as 5th (2002) and as low as 33rd (2005). Although Holmes, once considered the Jeffreys Bay nemesis of former-three-time ASP World Champion Andy Irons (HAW), 30, hasn’t competed for the past two years, the powerful natural-footer posted an emphatic win this morning in front of an ecstatic hometown crowd.

“I was so nervous out there for the first ten minutes of my heat that I felt like I had stones for legs,” Holmes said. “About halfway through the heat, I loosened up and was able to collect some pretty good scores. For a natural-footer, the wave here at J-Bay is such a pleasure to ride. Although I haven’t competed in this event for a couple of years, I feel comfortable out here and I’ll look to get through a few more rounds before I’m done here.”

Holmes not only announced his return to the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay this morning, but collected the highest heat total of the day, a 15.93 out of a possible 20, in his Round 1 win over 2009 ASP Dream Tour rookie Dustin Barca (HAW), 27. The South African’s navigation of the Jeffreys Bay lineup, uting everything from fully-committed forehand hacks to deftly-maneuvered barrels, went unmatched by the world’s best surfers throughout the remainder of the day.

BILLABONG PRO JEFFREYS BAY ROUND 1 RESULTS:
Heat 1: Michael Picon (FRA) 11.83 def. Tim Boal (FRA) 10.83
Heat 2: Nathaniel Curran (USA) 12.84 def. Jay Thompson (AUS) 9.33
Heat 3: Nic Muscroft (AUS) 15.17 def. Josh Kerr (AUS) 9.37
Heat 4: Kai Otton (AUS) 10.40 def. Phillip MacDonald (AUS) 8.33
Heat 5: Dean Morrison (AUS) 10.83 def. Marlon Lipke (DEU) 8.67
Heat 6: Chris Ward (USA) 12.67 def. Torrey Meister (HAW) 10.16
Heat 7: Sean Holmes (ZAF) 15.93 def. Dustin Barca (HAW) 14.50
Heat 8: Kekoa Bacalso (HAW) 15.83 def. Ryan Payne (ZAF) 11.00
Heat 9: Tim Reyes (USA) 14.33 def. Devyn Mattheys (ZAF) 4.73
Heat 10: Heath Joske (AUS) 8.87 def. Dayyan Neve (AUS) 8.03
Heat 11: Greg Emslie (ZAF) 13.34 def. Heitor Alves (BRA) 9.50
Heat 12: Chris Davidson (AUS) 11.00 def. David Weare (ZAF) 8.83
Heat 13: Michel Bourez (PYF) 14.33 def. Aritz Aranburu (EUK) 13.83
Heat 14: Roy Powers (HAW) 8.16 def. Jihad Khodr (BRA) 5.46
Heat 15: Ben Dunn (AUS) 8.50 def. Tiago Pires (PRT) 5.80
Heat 16: Dane Reynolds (USA) 12.00 def. Drew Courtney (AUS) 5.77

BILLABONG PRO JEFFREYS BAY ROUND 2 RESULTS:
Heat 1: C.J. Hobgood (USA) 13.17 def. Michael Picon (FRA) 13.10
Heat 2: Kai Otton (AUS) 12.90 def. Fredrick Patacchia (HAW) 11.23

REMAINING BILLABONG PRO JEFFREYS BAY ROUND 2 MATCH-UPS:
Heat 3: Jeremy Flores (FRA) vs. Dean Morrison (AUS)
Heat 4: Adriano de Souza (BRA) vs. Nathaniel Curran (USA)
Heat 5: Bobby Martinez (USA) vs. Roy Powers (HAW)
Heat 6: Tom Whitaker (AUS) vs. Ben Dunn (AUS)
Heat 7: Kieren Perrow (AUS) vs. Kekoa Bacalso (HAW)
Heat 8: Joel Parkinson (AUS) vs. Heath Joske (AUS)
Heat 9: Taj Burrow (AUS) vs. Sean Holmes (ZAF)
Heat 10: Mick Campbell (AUS) vs. Tim Reyes (USA)
Heat 11: Mick Fanning (AUS) vs. Michel Bourez (PYF)
Heat 12: Jordy Smith (ZAF) vs. Dane Reynolds (USA)
Heat 13: Kelly Slater (USA) vs. Nic Muscroft (AUS)
Heat 14: Taylor Knox (USA) vs. Chris Ward (USA)
Heat 15: Bede Durbidge (AUS) vs. Greg Emslie (ZAF)
Heat 16: Damien Hobgood (USA) vs. Chris Davidson (AUS)

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