After high winds and unruly conditions forced ASP Commish Kieren Perrow to cut the first day of competition for the Pipe Masters short on Thursday, all eyes were on the water early Friday morning for the start of Round 2.
And the first heat of the day was a doozy.
Two huge names from totally different backgrounds battled it out, both with their own reasons for wanting the W. Bruce Irons, the comeback story of the year, needed to reestablish his role as one of the best ever Pipe specialists. And Filipe had a little something called the World Title on the line. If he lost the heat, that dream would’ve died.
For years, Bruce has been a leader in terms of progression out at Pipe and Backdoor – he beat Kelly Slater in the 2001 final. But the 20-year-old Brazilian, didn’t back down. Filipe came out swinging with a 7.00, stalling on the take-off, and pulling under the lip at Pipe. And he backed it up with a mid-range 7 on a multiple tube section at Backdoor.
Perhaps it was the waves but Bruce couldn’t quite put up the scores. He had a few smaller tubes but couldn’t manage to get very deep. If it had been proper Pipeline – maxing out, crumbling on the outer reefs and exploding on the inside – maybe things would’ve turned out different.
Although the two competitors couldn’t be more different on paper, they share some cross-generational similarities. Filipe is almost like a young Bruce Irons – throwing his body and board to the air with little caution. It’s likely that Filipe grew up studying Bruce, like most surfers his age did.
“It was an honor to compete against Bruce,” Filipe said in a post heat interview.
