The ASP WQS 6-Star PRIME SriLankan Airlines Pro at Pasta Point in the Maldives was blessed with perfect surf all week, making it the most consistent event for wave quality for many years.
The eventual winner, Kekoa Bacalso from Hawaii, was one of 12 Hawaiians from the Round of 96 that dominated this event.
Even at the Quarterfinal stage there were still 5 Hawaiians of the 8 surfers in the event and 3 of the 4 Semifinalists were Hawaiian. It’s also been a long time since any region has dominated a big ASP WQS event like this.
Kekoa’s win pushed him from 38th to 5th, while follow finalist Dustin Barca (HAW) jumped from 66th to 19th. Semifinalists Joel Centeio (HAW) and Leonardo Neves (BRA) also relished in the points on offer moving to 27th and 46tt respectively.
Patrick Gudauskas (USA) is still holding a slender lead of 56 points over fellow American Austin Ware on 7,838 points.
Rounding out the Top 10 in the ratings from 3rd to 10th are Hizunome Bettero (BRA), Sunny (The Terminator “I’ll be back”) Garcia (HAW), Kekoa Bacalso (HAW), David Weare (ZAF), Brett Simpson (USA), Drew Courtney (AUS), Nathan Yeomans (USA) and Nathan Hedge (AUS).
Big movers this week were Sunny from 10th to 4th, Drew 18th to 8th, Yeomans from 24th to 9th with the big losers Adam Melling (AUS) down from 6th to 12th and T.J. Barron (HAW) 7th to 18th.
Taking a closer look at the ratings, considering the number of events surfed and average points per event, Bettero is probably well ahead in the ratings followed by Weare and Courtney all counting only five events compared to the others above them with seven already.
Further down the ratings in 17th is Raoni Monteiro (BRA) on 6,250 points after just four events averaging over 1,500 points per event. Add another three events at 1,500 and Raoni would be sitting on around 10,700, which is 3,000 more than Patrick in first so you can see that anyone can come from nowhere these days with a couple of good results.
That’s about it for this week, but for sure from now on we will have plenty of ASP WQS action with back-to-back ASP WQS 5-Star events in Brazil the next two weeks and plenty more for the rest of the year.