Chas Smith: 5 Things Surfing Can Learn From Natural Selection
Chas Smith: 5 Things Surfing Can Learn From Natural Selection
In this special guest blog, Beach Grit's finest explains why the WSL should take a leaf out of snowboarding's book.
I am a surf journalist, by trade, though any reader with two braincells half firing will chuckle at the phrase ‘surf journalist.’ It is an oxymoron, a finely-hewed gem of nonsense as precious as ‘San Diego-based weatherman’. But like the great San Diego-based weatherman Brick Tamland weighing in on birth, I am here to tell you five things surfing, professional surfing, can learn from the snowboard spectacular Natural Selection.
1. Instant Death
In professional surfing at the highest level, what we call the ‘championship tour,’ there is an event window, usually two weeks, which allow for five or six days of professional surfing. When does the first professional surfer get shamed out of the arena, pack his or her bags and go home? Somewhere around day three, which means there are at least two full days of everyone surfing for kicks. There is the seeding round where nobody goes home. There is round one, where the loser goes into round two, and then, finally, there is round two, where blood is finally spilt.
What?
Yes.
The seeding round is worthless, round one is mostly worthless and round two is just dumb because some loser, who should have already had his or her head lopped off, finally gets his or her head lopped off. It is an absolute waste of time made more egregious by the fact that ‘swell events’ generally last for three days maximum. So three days of good surf are wasted on barely beginning the contest. Natural Selection kills its losers, who aren’t even losers, on day one. All this might be forgiven if the draw was stacked with stars viewers wanted to see surf multiple days in order to get their money’s worth (the broadcast is free). But no. And so on to lesson two.
2. Invitation Only
Professional surfing’s championship tour gets its fresh blood from the ‘World Qualifying Series’. One might be confused and imagine the feeder system a rock n roll selection of epic waves determining the best of the best, but no. It is a selection of hideous waves based upon which municipality will pay most for the honour, and the theoretical tourist dollars, of hosting one. So QS warriors, as they are called, fly to Tel Aviv, Huntington Beach, Rio de Janeiro and tens, if not hundreds, more, where you’ll find them wiggling and waggling in two-foot slop.
These men and women are brave to travel so much (usually rich too), but rarely the best, and rarely the surfers people want to see. Natural Selection has pitched this whole malarkey by simply inviting the best, the snowboarders the people want to see. An easy solve and then these snowboarders, these the people want to see, are not trotted out in a seeding round but rather viciously pitted against one another - which brings us to lesson three.
3. Blood Feud Head-to-Head Matchups
Professional surfing gifts us, after all this, matchups based upon rankings which means surfers we enjoy watching surfing against surfers we don’t care about for days. There are rare upsets, rare sparks, and so we hold and wait and bore until later rounds where maybe, possibly, good matchups appear.
Natural Selection, on the other hand, hosts a wild dinner and/or truncated drinks before kickoff which features a drawing of names. Each of those names drawn then choose who they will do battle against. It is an automatic slap in the face. No snowboarder, with two brain cells half firing, would pick someone they think might beat them. They pick whom they think they can beat which automatically guarantees hurt feelings. Choosing someone, or being chosen, instantly crafts a power dynamic. A slap across the face with kid’s glove. A call out. A blood feud.
Surfing never, or rarely, has true beef. It has QS warriors going up against championship tour, CT, veterans who have surfed far too many days to care and let us move to lesson four.
4. Abbreviation
Natural Selection has three stops. Three epic stops. Jackson Hole, Baldface, Alaska. It can, and should, expand by two, somewhere Europe and somewhere Japan, but greatness cannot be bogged, manufactured, sold. There are only so many epic places, only so many epic days. Professional surfing bogs and bogs hard. On the championship tour alone, there are a mind numbing twelve stops, five of which mean anything. Not one professional surf fan wants to see Lower Trestles or Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch or wherever the MEO Portugal Pro happens. Cut and cut hard. But the powers-that-be don’t cut - and why? Let’s quickly move to lesson five.
5. Core Leadership
Professional surfing has rolled through a slough of business, tennis, hedge fund, stand-up paddleboarder Oklahoman executives. Fuck them all, to be honest. None of them understand this gem of nonsense, our surfing and/or snowboarding. Natural Selection has Travis Rice, Circe Wallace, Liam Griffin, Toby Grubb, Carter Westfall. A crew so locked into this world that they regularly sacrifice sense for it. They believe. They love. They can’t stop believing and loving and bleeding for it in spite of gain, expansion, fucking bullshit corpo-speak.
Snowboarding is in good hands.
Surfing is not.
Hooray for snowboarding!
To preorder Chas’s brilliant new book, click here.