C.J. Hobgood

Tahiti Result: 5 Previous Result: 5 ASP Rating: 4

Bitter truth: there was a moment in Tahiti, after Joel and Mick had lost, but before Taj had bested CJ, when Hobgood had a clear path to a legitimate world title.  It was Teahupoo, for fuck’s sake!  The last venue on tour in which the cards are clearly stacked in CJ’s favor.  But the moment slipped away, and the opportunity was lost.  As expected, CJ surfed his heats with a keen awareness of what it takes to win at Chopes: pits.  But things fell apart against Taj, as the regularfoot looked more aggressive in the deteriorating conditions.  Throughout his heats, CJ’s cutbacks lacked flow and purpose, as he tacked on Donovan-esque style slouches and two-stage positional finishes.  Fair enough, as the judges weren’t really scoring the cutbacks, anyway – just ask Bobby, who fell almost every time he tried to put it on rail.  But against Taj, CJ’s rail-apathy might have cost him.

Jordy Smith

Tahiti Result: 9 Previous Result: 3 ASP Rating: 6

Really, folks: is it any wonder people laugh at professional surfing? Jordy Smith is supposed to be our Lebron James.  The savoir of the league.  And he’s out there giving interviews about fucking cougars up the ass.  And then following that up with interviews about taking it up the ass.  “I don’t want to go to prison that’s for sure… if that’s what it feels like, I don’t want to go,” Smith told GT.  Oh, how the tables have turned, Jordy.  (And for the record, I’m not sure exactly what kind of rectal trauma Smith suffered, and, unlike GT, I don’t really want to know.)  The fact that the unspecified injury was one of the biggest stories of the event tells you a lot about professional surfing.  The other big story?  Josh Kerr getting stung by a wasp on the tip of his penis.  For god’s sake, let’s focus on actual surfing for a moment.  Smith looked much improved in his first heat, but against Adriano, he went into desperation mode after getting clipped on his opener.  There were like 20 minutes left, and Jordy only needed a 4.  He didn’t need to start launching rodeos.

Taylor Knox

Tahiti Result: 5 Previous Result: 9 ASP Rating: =10

For many fans, Taylor Knox is an eternal disappointment.  But consider this: how fucking shocked would you be to see Chris Brown or Vince de La Pena take down Parko at Chopes?  Don’t lie – your eyeballs would started bleeding.  I rest my case.  The fact that Knox is still here, still competing, and sometimes winning, is an amazing achievement.  The last few years, Taylor has turned into a bit of a veteran big game player.  Kinda like Robert Horry back in the day. Too bad surfing isn’t a team sport – but in a way it is, as Taylor came off the bench for Team Rip Curl, took out Parko, and cleared Fanning’s path to the basket.  TK does his best surfing against the surfers he respects the most.  Think Taylor’s losing effort at Trestles last year against Slater, or his winning, super-heat against Parko in R1 at J-Bay.  He’s still relevant.

Tom Whitaker

Tahiti Result: 5 Previous Result: 9 ASP Rating: 8

Incidentally, Tom Whitaker is another big game player.  Foolish pundits expressed shock when Whits took down Fanning in R3.   More discerning observers might have remembered Slater’s loss to Whitaker in dredging, shifty Mundaka barrels last year, or Slater’s loss to Whitaker at Bells the year before that.  Funny, really – that hat at Bells helped open up Fanning’s shot at his first world title.  Now, Whitaker has blocked Fanning’s path to the title instead.  Although he kept cool versus Fanning, Whits panicked against Aritz motherfuckin’ Aranburu.  Tommy tried to launch into a Jordy Smith upside-down flip thing, instead of sticking to his strengths.  The result: a deep and painful aranburuing.  Regardless, Whits has tip-toed his way back to the VIP room following a shocking 2008 campaign.  Sneaky bastard.

Aritz Aranburu

Tahiti Result: 3 Previous Result: 33 ASP Rating: 19

This is some Susan Boyle shit, right here.  I suspect the ASP marketing guys have been watching enough reality television to finally understand what sells in 2009.  The masses need heroes they can relate to.  They need aspirational entertainment; ugly ducklings transformed into princesses.  Enter the hunchback of Zarautz, Spain, whose unfortunate style translates extremely well when pig-dogging backside barrels.  (The trouble comes for Aritz when he pumps down the line frontisde, somehow in the same pig-dog stance, like a crab running sideways.)  But in left pits, Aritz proved his worth to a jaded surf world by sidelining Dane and Kelly.  I just hope their mutual sponsor, Quiksilver, doesn’t begin the cuts by firing Aranburu for insubordination. Maybe Aritz should get plastic surgery and implants now, in a bid to extend his 15 minutes…  And, for the record, I am now going to pretend I saw this coming.  Yes, poor Aranburu has been mercilessly slandered in the Power Rankings - but in his very first write up, I recognized that his backside tube skills made him look like a “special” third Irons Brother, who had been chained up in the basement for twenty years.

Adrian Buchan

Tahiti Result: 17 Previous Result: 17 ASP Rating: =14

Truly cutting edge surfers today realize that contest winnings and sponsorship agreements should only represent a fraction of their earnings.  The big money is in tell-all memoirs, video games, and merchandising. Just ask Kelly, who’s penned two books, created one video game, and now has his own skin cream from Kiehl’s.  Ace Buchan has a reputation for being one of the sharpest tools in the shed of tools that is the Top 45.  He’s been moving strong into the diversification game, profiteering off his writing skills.  Ace wrote a children’s book and he has a surprisingly insightful blog going on Surfline, where contributors are rumored to make in the neighborhood of $100 dollars per article!  Who said surfing doesn’t pay – that’s some P.Diddy money, right there.  It will be interesting to see how the ever-gracious Buchan spins his loss to Mick Campbell, who is basically a geriatric orangutan with alopecia and a bunch of moles that need to be looked at.  Ace parked himself in a few tidy ones during their heat, but Mick got the best of the priority situation and utilized his opportunities.

Kelly Slater

Tahiti Result: 17 Previous Result: 17 ASP Rating: =25

Sporting lives are lived in dog years.  For fans, watching a great athlete stream by and then inevitably pass away is like losing the family dog.  Surfers of my generation grew up with Kelly Slater – he was young with us, wildly successful when we were groveling students, rich when we were poor, a retiree just when our lives were getting started, and then he was vanquished just as we started to succeed.  Seeing Kelly struggle, like watching Michael Jordan struggle, is just as painful as seeing a once great dog grow old and lame.  Sure, you feel bad for them.  But they’re just fucking dogs – mostly we feel bad for ourselves, because watching a dog die reminds us of our own mortality and expiring dreams.

Slater’s comebacks allowed us all to breath deep and inhale a lungful of vitality – as he won again and again, we felt immortal again.  But now - watching these three 17th s in a row?  Well, in shaky times, no one wants one more reminder that we live in an age of decline, an era in which things once held bedrock-stable crumble to ruin around us.  No one wants a reminder that death is coming, death is the end, and that believing otherwise is a pastime for emotional children, who still need to be lied to.

Dane Reynolds

Tahiti Result: 33 Previous Result: 33 ASP Rating: =28

Watching Dane Reynolds surf makes me feel young again.  A frisky, buoyant Reynolds tail-pitch gives me hope for the future.  Things are headed in the right direction!  I used to be cynical about surf companies and their new Little Emperors. “It’s all marketing hype!” I’d whine. “None of these kids are the next Slater or Curren!  The next Slater will come from some third-world ghetto.  It’s just too convenient for Quiksilver that the next Slater would be a marketable, charming, handsome kid from Southern California.”

That my friends, is what I USED to believe.  But Quiksilver’s videos and articles in the surf mags about Dane going on Quiksilver-funded boat trips opened my eyes to the truth.  Dane Reynolds is in fact the best surfer on earth.  Kelly Slater said so, and why would he say that if it weren’t true?  And you know what’s even better than Dane’s ultra-progressive surfing?  It’s the fact that he’s not some corporate stooge – he’s a super-laid back artist type just like me.  He likes independent music, he takes photographs, and he’s such a good photographer that he even has his own line of T-Shirts, with his photos on them, available from Quiksilver.  He’s the real deal, as evidenced by his last two 33rds.

Jeremy Flores

Tahiti Result: 17 Previous Result: 17 ASP Rating: 17

Here’s another kid with a tremendous future.  I didn’t really know anything about Flores, or like his surfing very much, until I checked out this awesome trilogy of movies about a group of 4’ tall hobbits on a quest in a scary foreign land.  I’m talking of course about Young Guns 1-3.  Turns out I’m way off base about Jeremy.  He’s probably the best young competitor on earth and a major star, which I hadn’t realized because he’s European, and Europe is this sleepy little backwater with a giant fucking economy and untapped consumer base, just waiting for a once-in-a-generation Quiksilver-sponsored surfer to emerge and introduce them to the sport and clothing style that is surfing.  Now that I’m well-informed, and my American-prejudice has been broken down, it’s obvious to me that Jeremy Flores, who’s gotten 17th in the last two events, is clearly a world title contender… and if you haven’t figured that out yet, then you’re not watching the Quik vids closely enough.

Jay Thompson

Tahiti Result: 9 Previous Result: 9 ASP Rating: 13

You know when you go to tasteful, exclusive, high-end restaurant, and you’re having a relaxing meal of the highest level, drinking a special wine, and some goddamned out-of-state tourist walks in and sits down at the table next to you?  And he’s wearing clothes from wall-mart, and talking loudly to his simply tacky date, and they’re laughing and having fun like idiots, and you think to yourself, “How did HE get here?  He shouldn’t be here! He doesn’t belong! He doesn’t even have on a tie!”  That’s how I feel about Jay “Bottle” Thompson.  I mean, this fellow isn’t even an official member of the Top 45. He’s surfing in place of the injured Luke Stedman.  And everyone knows that injury replacement surfers are meant to be seen, not heard.  And now this Thompson gent has the audacity to win heats against better-sponsored surfers, like Jeremy Flores.  This uncouth man has gotten two 9ths in a row, and he’s ranked 13th in the world! Have you ever heard of such a thing?  I’m really peeved.  He’s not even supposed to be here!