Kelly Slater might not be looking so hot this year… but let’s just wait and see what happens. He’s been here before. Photo: WSL / Kelly Cestari
Kelly Slater isn’t doing very well this year. He’s doing badly, actually. Very badly. So badly it has people calling for his retirement. “Should have gone out when the getting was good,” they say. “This is just sad!” they wail, snot and tears and spit flying from their upper orifices, beating their chests in anguish. Kelly himself seems a little confused about the whole thing. “Yeah, it didn’t start out real great,” he told Rosie Hodge after losing to Leo Fioravanti in the second round of the Margaret River Pro. “I just can’t get it happening.”
You can see the frustration in his eyes, right? And for many Slater fans, his pain is your pain. When he hurts, you hurt. That is the depth of your fandom. Deeper than Atlantis! But don’t despair just yet. Kelly Slater has been in almost this exact same situation… and he climbed out of the hole. So far this year, he’s got a 25th, a 13th place finish, and a second round knock out. So when were things ever this bad for the champ?
It was 2009. It was still the ASP. Andy Irons was on tour, although it was a part time gig. Kelly was only the 9x champ. Parko kicked off the year in the finest of forms, winning at both Snapper and Bells, then Bobby Martinez won at Teahupoo because he is Bobby Martinez and I miss him on tour. And Kelly? Oh, Kelly. He floundered desperately near the bottom of the rankings, like a man trying to find a rung on a Vaseline-covered ladder. In the first three events of 2009, Kelly Slater was mired in the bog of 17th place. “Retire, old man!” people screamed. “Retire before it’s too late! Go out on top!”
Instead of listening, Kelly Slater turned around and won the next event, the Hang Loose Santa Catarina Pro in Brazil. And while he didn’t win another event all year, and certainly didn’t win a world title, he continued to hang out among the top of the rankings. After those first three 17th place finishes, he put up the first place finish in Brazil, then followed it up with two thirds and a second (the last of which was at Pipeline, losing to the recently retired Taj Burrow), as well as a ninth and one more seventeenth. All told, he finished up the year in a very respectable sixth place behind Fanning, Parko, Durbidge, Taj, and Adriano de Souza. And what happened in the next few years? Slater went from 9x champ to 11x champ, turning him from Kelly to Ke11y.
So, as usual, instead of counting Kelly Slater out so early in the year, let’s just wait a bit before we tell him to retire again. Of course, I’d like to see him go out on top. Watching an old man struggle to do something he used to be good at is just sad. Kelly Slater is not an old man yet. He’s still at the top of the game, and watching him surf is far from sad. And for God’s sake, what happens if he listens to everyone this time and quits the tour? Will you be to blame for ruining a fantastic comeback? Kelly’s in a position he’s not used to being in right now: he’s the underdog. And everyone loves a good underdog story.
