MONSTER PRO LURKS ON: Pray For Surf

They’re sucking it in and breaking out the summer shapes at Pipeline. Mother Ocean just doesn’t want to give it up or anything close to it and it’s down to the wire on the last two days of the waiting period for this year’s Monster Energy Pipeline Pro, presented by Billabong.

The event dates, shared by the Honolua Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic meant that today’s Monster competition ran 4 heats out of the Round of 64. The Bodysurfing Classic ran their meet directly afterward, right up to the final with uber-human fish Mike Stewart winning it for the 6,000th time.

But, back to the Monster Energy caper.

With the surf just hinting at existence and a surprise-surprise “blip” of a swell catching the inside reef, Jamie Pipe-O’Brien presented the hard core beach crowd with a short seminar on stuffing your body into waist high soup cans. Florida’s Sterling Spencer smoked the morning roster with a 9.5 but couldn’t grab a legit. back-
up before the horn. Dustin Cuizon did the back ‘n forth paddle battle with himself at Backdoor and Off the Wall to nail down the 3rd heat and Justin McBride made the mainland proud by winning the last heat of the morning and then it was cram time for the bodysurfers to get to a final before dark.

By the way, the rain inundation that started 6 weeks ago is still burying the islands in buckets of the fresh stuff and there’s no let up in sight till the end of the week, maybe. That’s what they said during the week of Christmas and we’re almost at Valentine’s Day, so go figure. One thing’s for sure, today will have a Monster Energy Final by the afternoon and there’s a lot of Pipe posse types praying for at least a foot more of wave so that there’s an inch more of water below them on the suck-outs. This is where We All Pray For Surf…..