Adrian Buchan overcomes Patrick Gudauskas to enter ASP PRIME Nike Lowers Pro Semi-finals
Australia’s Adrian Buchan barely made it into the Semi-finals of the Nike Lowers Pro, an Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) PRIME event, after winning a real nail-biting Quarter-final against Americas Patrick Gudauskas that went down at the well-known
surf-break of Lower Trestles in San Clemente, California, on Saturday, May 5.
The clean two-to-four foot waves breaking at the primary event site on the final day of the event offered a great deal of opportunities to the surfers to dig deep in their bag of tricks and pull out some of their best stuff to keep the crowd entertained.
There was plenty of motivation for the top surfing talent from around the globe to push themselves hard considering the rewards that awaited the winner in the end. A slice of the huge prize purse, the coveted ASP ranking points and of course the prestigious
trophy was nothing something that they wanted to miss out on without putting up a strong fight.
Both Buchan and Gudauskas had done well to hold their own while facing a tough competition over the last few days. The conditions had favoured them just as much as their rivals, but the two experienced surfers had managed to extract a little bit extra out
of the opportunities that had come in their direction.
Pitted against each other in a battle for the last remaining Semi-final spot, there was no doubt that an exciting battle was about to take place.
As the fourth Quarter-final got underway, Buchan wasted very little time to put his rival under pressure through his first business-wave that scored a 6.00 to put him in the lead. After going through a series of ordinary scores, he got his hand on a juicy
wave. He pulled off a combination of exquisite manoeuvres to compel the judges into giving him a 7.83 for the effort, thus taking him to a heat-total of 13.83 points.
Gudauskas did not go down without a fight and responded strongly with a 6.43 and 7.10-point wave. However, his resultant heat-total of 13.53 points placed him in a 0.30-point deficit, thus forcing him to surrender victory to Buchan.
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