Surf ContestsFantasy Surfer 

So the world tour is about to kick off again in Australia, with the new formats properly established, an extra event added and some hot new talent on the scene, this could be one fantastic year of competitive surfing. On top of all that, the great thing about the contests these days, is that they’re all broadcast live over the internet. A few years ago you had to wait a couple of months before the surf magazines would run a report, now you can watch the action go down, wave-by-wave, and you get to see all the tactics and drama that can go down in a heat. Check the ASPWorldTour.com for the tour schedule and links to the live broadcasts, and if you want to make the action even more exciting, join us in playing Fantasy Surfer.

Kelly on his way to his monumental 10th world title last year but will he be back for more?

Just like most sports these days, surfing has it’s own “Fantasy” league, where you can create your own super team of surfers, and gain points based on how well the real surfers do in each event. It’s free (the best word in gambling) and pretty easy to play. Sign up and you’ll be given 2 teams, one men’s and one women’s, and lots of imaginary money to draft your surfers. There’s an imposed salary cap on each team, so you have to be quite selective with who you pick, as trying to budget in 8 surfers can be quite tricky (I always ended up fielding an under-strength team). You can swap your surfers around as much as you like between events in order to fine tune your talent to each location, and the better they finish, the more points you earn; and what to points mean?….. Actually on that note, if your team comes out on top of everyone at the end of the season you stand in line for a pretty sick trip for 2 to Indonesia. The best part of it though is that it makes watching the contest great fun, as you end up really rooting for your team members. But most importantly, it’s all about the bragging rights over your buddies, and to that end we’ve made a “Club House” basically a page where you can see all of our teams, those of anyone who joins us and how we score against each other. The club is called “Surf Simply” and you can find it in the “Clubs” page on the Fantasy Surfer website. Maybe we’ll even throw out a little prize of our own for the best team in our club.

Last year Sam was the best among us, and at one point he was in the world top 20. His top tips were to study the form (the ASP has the results for each contest for the last 10 years on it’s site), trust the locals at each spot, and then check the heat sheets as soon as they’re up on the contest site, in order to make sure your own team aren’t going to knock each other out.

Enjoy the contest season, and hopefully we’ll see you in our club house before the season gets underway next weekend!

by Harry Knight