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ASP WQS 6-Star PRIME Rip Curl Pro at Hossegor has been completed with current ASP WQS No. 2 Chris Davidson (AUS) taking out his second title this year and by doing so has probably cemented his place on the prestigious Dream Tour for 2009 along with equal 5th place finisher and current ASP WQS No. 1 Nathaniel Curran (USA), who unfortunately is injured and will be missing next week’s ASP WQS 6-Star in Portugal.
Davo outpointed current ASP Top 45 member Jihad Khodr (BRA) in the Final and equal 3rds were Germany’s Marlon Lipke and Aussie Josh Kerr.
In the curren ’QS ratings Top 20, three Aussies, Dion Atkinson, Adam Robertson and Nic Muscroft have ped out making way for Tiago Pires (PRT), Shaun Gossman (ZAF/AUS) and Khodr.
Big movers this week upwards were Josh Kerr from 12th to 3rd, Marlon Lipke 14th to 7th , Tim Boal 14th to 8th, Jihad Khodr from 32nd to 11th and Shaun Gossman from 23rd to 16th (continuing his roller coaster ratings ride). In the last five events Shaun has gone from 23rd to 15th to 19th to 23rd and now back to 16th.
Those ping places were Greg Emslie from 6th to 13th, Pedro Henrique from 4th to 9th and Patrick Guduaskas from 7th to 10th. The rest remained within a couple of places.
The current Top 20 now are:
Curran,Nathaniel USA 13200
Davidson,Chris AUS 12525
Kerr,Josh AUS 11325
Nicol,Yadin AUS 10500
Weare,David ZAF 10450
Courtney,Drew AUS 10400
Lipke,Marlon DEU 10300
Boal,Tim FRA 10063
Henrique,Pedro BRA 9988
Gudauskas,Patrick USA 9894
Khodr,Jihad BRA 9888
Bettero,Hizunome BRA 9400
Emslie,Greg ZAF 9375
Garcia,Sunny HAW 9350
Paulino,Pablo BRA 9350
Gossmann,Shaun AUS 9276
Monteiro,Raoni BRA 9275
Yeomans,Nathan USA 8913
Simpson,Brett USA 8800
Pires,Tiago PRT 8788
It is interesting to note that of these guys, David Weare is sitting in the best position as he is carrying four scores of under 1,000 points. Jihad and Pablo two under 1,000 with Tiago Pires on a zero and a 563 so expect Tiago to jump up dramatically especially seeing the next event is at this home break.
Lately, I have been getting queries as to my prediction of the cutoff points needed to qualify for next year’s ASP World Tour. Currently it’s in the mid 9,000 mark and most surfers are carrying one or two low scores under 1,000 or just on it so they should all expect to at least have around 1,000 more come the year end. That means the cutoff is already in the mid-to-high 10,000’s with just reasonable results.
If the Dream Tour surfers continue to do the remaining ASP WQS events, I can foresee them taking most of the big points on offer and the others moving slowly upwards. If they don’t do the ASP WQS events, then those sitting high in the ratings can expect a lot more points and the cutoff could go over 12,000 easily.
What’s it mean? Well Curran is safe, Davo should be, Josh Kerr also as he has a real low 7th score and the rest who knows as only time will tell and there are still three ASP WQS 6-Star Primes and five ASP WQS 6-Star events left so someone could decide to start now from zero and still make 12,000 plus points easily.
The ASP Pro Juniors had one event this week in Ericeira, Portugal - site of this week’s ASP WQS 6-Star Buondi Billabong Pro. The ASP Pro Junior division held this past weekend was won by Charles Martin in the boy’s and Alizee Arnaud in the girls.
In Hawaii the Roxy Jam women’s longboard ASP LQS event was won by the new current ASP Women’s World Longboard Champ Joy Monahan at Queen’s on Oahu.