TRUST IN SURF-STATS!

Well, we said a lot of things, and while for some of them we wait to see the outcome, others panned out beautifully in R1 of the Men’s and Women’s Bells.

In our Men’s WSL Fantasy Surfing write-ups, we gave you Tier A as Mick Fanning and Adriano De Souza.  Both lost R1.  Who knew?  But that’s not the end of the road for these two high seeds, Fanning faces a novice 16 year-old WC in Joe Van Dijk and De Souza will battle C.J. Hobgood in R2.  Expect nothing but R3 and beyond for both of our Tier A guys.

We advised against the #brazilianstorm and so far, that looks like pretty good advice, no?  The Brazilians mustered a R1 AHS of 11.35 while the other countries put up a bit higher with 11.84, and only 1/7 (Medina) won R1.  6/7 of the B-Storm will face an elimination round.  Our money is on the veteran De Souza.

Tier B? We lit up Tier B.

We gave you locks: Jordy, Parko.  They both did their job in R1.  We told you to stay away from Kelly but get on John John, but so far that looks good for everyone regardless.  We also told you to get on the dark horse that is Nat Young.  The R1 performance he put on was expected in our book, hope you weren’t surprised.  Look for him to elevate his game when cleaner conditions arrive next week in R3.  Natty Boy all day.

As for the Women’s R1?  Well we couldn’t be happier.  We told you to go with Fitz over Lima in Tier B and to opt for Lakey Peterson instead.  Is that calling it or is that calling it?  We’ll wait to see how Sage Erickson does in R2 but we hope you have Carissa Moore on your team for this one, she’ll win it says we.

Oh and don’t for a second believe that Kelly Slater is retiring after Bells.  No chance.