Major moves inside the Top 15 qualifiers this week.
This week’s ASP WQS events, the La Santa Pro 6-Star Prime in the Canaries and Maresia Surf International 6-Star in Brazil, have not only made the cutoff jump up around 500 points to 10,213, but created havoc inside the ratings for the bottom half of Top 15 WQS qualifiers.
The top 8 are basically unchanged except Rodrigo Dornelles, who has moved from 8th to 5th, and is pushing the 12,000 points mark.
Miky Picon jumped from 14th to 9th.
Royden Bryson from 24th to 10th.
Troy Brooks from 26th to 17th, which pushed Dayyan Neve out of the top 15.
Of the Foster’s ASP World Tour double qualifiers, C.J. Hobgood and Jeremy Flores seem safe and will not need their WQS rating, however, Rodrigo Dornelles and Royden Bryson, currently 23rd and 25th, may want their WQS rating.
If this happens, then Troy Brooks at 17th is the last in. If not, then Kieren Perrow and Neco Padaratz are just hanging in there, but there is a group of guys within a few hundred points that could easily jump up.
Patrick Beven with his win in the La Santa Pro jumped from 51st to 24th and is now just another good result from qualifying along with Shaun Cansdell, who also jumped from 43rd to 23rd.
The ASP WQS 6-Star Maresia event has been dominated by Brazilians, as you would expect with the exception of Cory Ziems.
Congratulations to Adriano de Souza on his win. Adriano has moved to 31st on 9500 points but is also sitting 23rd on the Foster’s ASP World Tour ratings.
At the top end of the WQS ratings, I think we can safely say that anyone with 11,000 or more points has qualified for the 2008 Men’s Tour, and it’s great to see new faces in there. Jordy, Dane, Tiago (finally), Bottle and Jihad should be able to do some damage on the ASP World Tour in 2008.
Next week’s ASP WQS 6-Star Onbongo Pro in Brazil should decide who is in or out as the last two remaining major WQS events the Reef Hawaiian Pro in Haleiwa and O’Neill World Cup at Sunset are stacked with all the Foster’s ASP World Tour competitors (37 of the 45) and local hotshots.
Other than the occasional good result from someone other than the ASP Foster’s 45 and locals, history has shown that not much changes on the ratings in Hawaii.
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