A successful fourth round sends Josh Kerr to Billabong Rio Pro quarterfinals
The surfing action continued on Thursday, May 19th, with Australia’s Josh Kerr facing fellow countryman Bede Durbidge and Brazil’s Adriano de Souza in the third heat of Men’s Billabong Rio Pro’s fourth round at the beach-break of Barra Da Tijuca
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The battle turned out to be a one-man show as Kerr clinched a convincing victory over his rivals to cement his place in the quarter-finals.
The Queensland surfer put up an impressive performance during the heat, exhibiting both skill and style, to earn a two-wave score of 13.87.
Durbidge tried to put up a fight to keep Kerr from walking away with victory, but the effort eventually turned out to be futile as he could only manage to earn a total score of 12.07.
The biggest disappointment came from the local surfer, De Souza. The 24-year-old Brazilian had a lot of hype surrounding him ever since his epic performance in the previous stop of Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Men’s World Tour, Rip Curl Pro,
at Bells Beach in Victoria, where he had went on a rampage during the quarter-finals to bring a premature end to ASP World No.1, Kelly Slater.
However, the sort of performance that De Souza gave during the third heat of the fourth round, it was really hard to recognise him as the same surfer who had managed to prevail over the world’s best surfer just a few weeks ago.
De Souza struggled throughout the heat to catch a wave and ended up with a disappointing 4.67, the lowest fourth-round score.
Kerr is making amends ever since getting off to a poor start at Rio de Janeiro on the opening day of Billabong Rio Pro. He remained impressive in the second round to prevail over Australia’s Chris Davidson and went on to defeat South Africa’s Jordy Smith
in the third round to assert his form.
De Souza, on the other hand, is displaying a rather inconsistent form. This is extremely alarming for the Brazilian surfer as he needs to hold on to his top form firmly if he intends to walk away successful from the third stop of ASP Men’s World Tour.
Durbidge is also another surfer that is constantly showing improvement and even though he failed to make a strong impact in the fourth round, there is hardly any doubt that he possesses the potential to bounce back and stay in contention for the event’s
title.
Kerr’s victory in the fourth round has made him one of the fourth quarter-finalists that were to be determined in the fourth round. De Souza and Durbidge will be heading off to the fifth round to make one last effort to remain in the competition. A failure
to still find their rhythm will result in their elimination from this year’s Billabong Rio Pro. With a do-or-die situation at hand, both of them are expected to up their game and put up a determined fight in their next round that will hopefully commence on
Friday.
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