Being completely immersed in everything surf as we are, we like to dabble in a bit of Fantasy Surfing. Not the kind where you finger surf along your desk to the tunes of Dirty Beaches in your mind, imagining releasing the fins to the point of no return. No, instead the high stakes game of putting your salty locks on the line for the prestige of being the best at picking which top world surfers will dominate each WSL Championship Event.
Righto heres our intel for the first event;
Mar 11 - 22, 2018 - Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Exit Surf’s Fantasy Surfing Men’s Picks:
The outlook looks fun with overhead waves most of the waiting period and a couple of cyclone swells to fuel the wave machine of Snapper. It’s been a good run for the goofies, who have won 3 of the last 4 year, when previously to that it was a bit of a natural oasis.
The top tier picks for us have to be between Jon Jon, Owen, Gabe and Wilko, they have been all over this break the last few years. Usually we like to add Julian to that mix too, but with a busted wing he’s a bit of a long shot. So we have gone for the class and total skill level of Jon Jon with the good guy goofy awesomeness of Owen (plus Tristan has put a massive billboard of him on our shopfront and he won with a head injury last year so just imagine what he can do with a brain at full capacity!)
Middle tier is a bit more interesting, do you go the exciting but riskier rookie route, or the tried and true local route. After watching a few of these guys on their home turf, we thing Parko and Fanning are solid bets. Parko consistently does so well here with smooth style, innate wave knowledge and an insane behind the rock technique. Fanning, the free agent, only doing the ozzie leg this year, will be fast loose and free.. in other words dangerous. Our other 2 picks are Toledo, as he is just a freak and “spoiler alert’ is one of our picks for world champ at the end of this year! With his air game now backed up with his solid rail and barrel game… game on! Our final slot goes to Conner Coffin, his smooth power surfing with insane guitar skills was an easy pick for Exit Kerry, plus he’s done really well here the last 2 years.
Now the bottom tier you need to take into account a bit the clashes you have in the draw but we like to look of Wade Carmichael… that beard is second only to Hughs in the store, and his modern power surfing could catch some people out. Then Zeke fills in the mix with his amazing forehand attack and barrel awareness, which bagged him a perfect 10 here last year.
Exit Surf’s Fantasy Surfing Women’s Picks:
With being such a performance wave, Snapper really highlights the best female surfers here. We are super excited to have New Zealander Paige Hareb competing in WSL Womens Tour this year, so she is obviously our pick in tier C… go kiwi!
So working our way up, middle tier for us has Lakey Peterson who at the surfer awards last week had a bunch of best moves up for top honours! Our second pick was a bit harder with a tough call between Nikki Van Dijk, Defay and Carissa. Nikki just won the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro but for just sheer power and winning ability we went with Carissa.
Top tier was an easy pick… happy Gilmore the queen of the goldy!
Get involved
First go to the Official World Surf League site at http://wct.fantasy.worldsurfleague.com and sign in/join
Then make your team for each tour you wish to enter Men’s and Women’s
After you have chosen your team join our Fantasy League called Exit Surf with password Exit Surf (you can do this anytime during the year)
Keep your year full of surf, when each ding coming from your pocket won’t be your latest trade me auction, instead your chance at being the top surf dawg.
And what do you get… priority in the line up for a year at Taylors? No Hughsy will probably still fade you just to pull out some inverted freak move to leave you both in awe and completely white water bound. But we could have our arm twisted to add a prize…
Look forward to seeing you in our league, and we’ll give WSL fantasy surf tip for each event.
Happy picking