I remember sitting in one of my college lectures – don’t ask which one, it’s a miracle I could even find the building – and the professor was talking about a Chinese concept called the Wu Xing. I would have
I
remember sitting in one of my college lectures – don’t ask which one, it’s a miracle I could even find the building – and the professor was talking about a Chinese concept called the Wu Xing. I would have rather been listening to Wu Tang, but this new idea held my interest well enough. Wu Xing, I learned, is a philosophy that helps explain universal truths by way of the “Five Phases,” being wood, earth, water, fire and metal. If you change the order of those elements, it alters the purpose, but the order I just stated is the order of “mutual conquest.”
Where am I going with this? Well, we’re currently in a situation where five – five! – Kauai wahine surfers could all qualify for the 2015 ASP World Championship Tour. There are only 16 automatic qualifiers in the entire world and just 18 compete at each event, so if five of them were to hail from the Garden Isle, that should be considered one major mutual conquest.
If the season were to end today, Malia Manuel, Nage Melamed and Leila Hurst would all be receiving ASP world tour invitations. Manuel is already on the CT and sits in sixth place overall after four events. The top 10 at year’s end make it back on tour, so her strong start puts her in solid position, not to mention her dominance in Qualifying Series events.
The top six in the World Qualifying Series rankings also catapult onto the tour. Melamed and Hurst are in sixth and eighth places, respectively, on that leaderboard. But Manuel and Australia’s Laura Enever both sit ahead of them and each would currently be invited for their CT ranking. That would bump the Kauai pair up to fourth and sixth. There are still four major events left in the Qualifying Series season with plenty of movement guaranteed, but for what they’ve done so far this year, they’d have made it to the highest possible competitive level.
Tatiana Weston-Webb finished just one spot outside the qualifying top six last season and is currently in a similar spot. She is 10th in the WQS standings, but Manuel, Enever and Carissa Moore are all in front of her, so she is essentially in seventh for qualifying purposes. After her world tour debut at the Rio Women’s Pro last week, where she reached the fourth round, Tati appears to belong.
The toughest path is currently ahead of Alana Blanchard, who is off to a rough start in her fourth world tour campaign. She has taken Equal 13th in each of the first four events and resides in 17th place with six events remaining. It would have to be a reversal of last season, when Blanchard started strong with a pair of quarters and a ninth in her first three events, for her to earn a third consecutive world tour qualification. But let’s also not forget that she has strong sponsor support and could be a very worthy wild card.
It would be a remarkable journey from this point, but the fact remains that a few months down the road, we could well be witnessing a collection of five Kauai surfers all contending for the world tour. Hawaii is the birthplace of surfing and this would further a rebirth of sorts after some years of Australian dominance. Oahu’s Carissa Moore has captured the crown in two of the past three seasons and Coco Ho has continued the legacy of her famed Sunset Beach family, while rookie Alessa Quizon joined her island mates this year.
If all the elements align correctly and five women from close-knit Kauai amazingly reach the peak of competitive surfing next season, it would have to be considered one of the greatest conquests in the sport’s history.
End of lecture.
