What do the judges know about man turns anyway? Photo: WSL/Youtube
Conner Coffin could be the nicest guy on tour. I’m hesitant to say that definitively – he’s a rookie after all, we don’t know him that well yet! But if his most recent post-heat interview is any indication, the guy handles even the worst of losses with diplomacy.
Not too long ago, before he qualified for the world tour, Conner, his brother Parker, Tanner Gudauskas, and Taylor Knox took a trip to J-Bay. They later dropped a 19-minute flick, HIGHLINE!, documenting the escapade. Conner was a standout. On a re-envisioned Channel Islands Black Beauty, first popularized by Tom Curren, Conner ripped man turn after man turn out of clean overhead J-Bay walls. He got the cover of Surfer magazine for it, with the accompanied proclamation, “A return to form: Retracing classic lines at the world’s best pointbreak.”
Unlike his contemporaries, Conner represented an up and comer that would innovate by returning to hard and loud power surfing when others were so focused on aerial maneuvers. His rise to qualification was a justification of sorts that man turns would never go out of style.
Given this history, it makes sense that Conner says in his interview the two events that he most looked forward to were Fiji and J-Bay. Conner cut his teeth on the perfectly groomed rights of Rincon. The lined up righthand walls of J-Bay not only fit his style of surfing perfectly, they’re a homecoming.
So, when Conner went down by 0.19 points to Adam Melling in Round 2, his frustration was comprehensible. Following his heat, he went to have a talk with the judges to see why they were more rewarding of Melling’s waves when he felt he got bigger waves and accomplished more and better maneuvers. (To see a recap of the whole heat, check out the video below and decide for yourself.)
Conner later spoke with Rosy Hodge about what he learned exchanging words with the judges (skip to 1:19 in the video below for an abbreviated version, or go to round 2 heat 11 and click the microphone icon in the heat analyzer for the full interview).
“It’s apples to oranges,” Conner said. “Adam comes from behind the wave and attacks the lip a little bit more, and that’s kind of what the judges were saying. They felt like my carves were a little bit less committed and maybe not taking as much risk. But, I don’t know, I kind of disagree with that. That’s what I enjoy watching in surfing, ya know? So I don’t really feel like hitting the lip is harder. Sometimes it isn’t as fun and doesn’t feel as good. To me it just feels good to catch big waves and do big carves.”
Apparently the judges didn’t enjoy watching Conner’s rail game as much as I did. But for Conner, he says he’s not mad, he just wants to understand how they’re scoring things and why – to learn from this experience and get better.
