When it comes to Pipe, no one’s got it wired quite like John John. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
John John Florence is synonymous with Pipeline. He grew up with the world’s most famous wave as his playground, and it shows. He’s gone from a little towheaded wunderkind to a man who exceeded all the lofty expectations the world heaped on his young shoulders, and at the Florence Pipe Pro — a fitting sponsor — he came out with all cylinders firing. In the round of 64, in fact, John John appeared to have a V8 under the hood while the rest of the competitors were driving around in busted up old 4-bangers.
It’s not all that surprising. He’s got three world titles and multiple Pipe Pro wins under his belt. But still, the level he’s surfing at is hard to believe. In his debut heat, he earned himself an 18.10 heat total and in doing so threw a warning shot across the bow of anyone unlucky enough to draw him in a heat.
Wave one was a funneling right at Backdoor followed by a sort of flyaway air that netted him a 9.33. Wave two was an 8.77 that bettered his backup score that sat in the mid-5 range.
“It may have looked like it was a close out to some,” brother Nathan Florence said via the webcast, “but he knows it’s going to bend enough on the reef… there are certain guys in this event that can make scores out of waves that normal people wouldn’t be getting scores out of. They wouldn’t read it the same way, like, ‘I know that’s going to be better than my backup score’ or ‘I know this wave isn’t going to close out as soon as the rest of the guys think.”
It’s that intimate knowledge of the reef at Pipeline that makes him such a danger… that, and his immense talent riding a surfboard.
