Championship Tour heats and interference calls at Sunset Beach go together like peanut butter and jelly. The wave is unpredictable and so is the lineup, with a big playing field for surfers to navigate. You have a deepwater wave and multiple points, bowl sections, different reef sections, two deep channels, and all of it is affected differently based on swell direction and wind conditions. This lends itself to needing a unique type of familiarity with the wave and even flat-out luck for competitors to succeed there. It’s also a recipe for that occasional interference call.
Owen Wright and Kelly Slater were slapped with interference calls at the 2022 Hurley Pro Sunset Beach in the Elimination Round and Round of 32 respectively. Both were sent packing because of the penalties. Zeke Lau was hit with a controversial interference call in 2023, thinking he had priority when he didn’t. He was also involved in an interference-that-never-was in a heat with Jack Robinson. Slater had a win under his belt in 2022 and was already safe from the WSL’s new mid-year cut. But for Lau and Wright, the decisions were costly enough you could argue it cost each of them a shot at staying in the top-20 of the men’s CT rankings and finishing out a full year on tour.
These are just a few examples of interference calls at Sunset that shaped the rankings. Priority interference costs the penalized surfer a whole wave score while paddle interference has the surfer’s second scoring wave cut in half, making the distinction between the two monumental.
On Tuesday, Sawyer Lindblad became the latest victim (or perpetrator) of a paddle interference call at Sunset Beach. Luckily for the rookie, it won’t impact her spot in the rankings because her 6.83 high wave score in the same heat was enough to save her from going out in the elimination round alone. The wave in question would have been one of the better rides of the day, however, with Gabriela Bryan forced to cut her line off before a potentially deep barrel section.
“She hindered the potential of Gabriela Bryan,” Travis Logie explained after the call. “Really got right in the way. All five judges called it. They didn’t think it was intentional, otherwise it would have been a harsher punishment. So it’s called an interference penalty one and half her second scoring ride gets taken off.”
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