Bobby Martinez to retire from ASP in September
America’s Bobby Martinez will be taking retirement from the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour in September.
The 29-year-old surfer will not be competing in the upcoming World Tour event, Billabong Pro Tahiti, scheduled to get underway from August 20, but plans on competing at Quiksilver Pro in New York next month.
The news of the Santa Barbara-based surfer skipping the competition in Tahiti comes as a huge surprise as it is this place where he has collected two of his four elite Tour victories in 2006 and 2009.
Martinez’s Los Angeles-based agent, Bryon Taylor said, “After some 12 years of grinding it out, Bobby quite simply has had enough, and is looking forward to the next chapter of free surfing and the occasional boat trip.”
Martinez, who had been incepted onto the elite ranks in 2006, was currently participating in his fifth season and currently ranked 14 on the ASP World Tour rankings. He has failed to clinch any successful result in the latest season of the World Tour, with
an equal fifth at the Billabong Pro Rio in May as his best result so far.
Things have not been going well for the Californian surfer over the last few years as far as his career is concerned. He was having a hard time finding and retaining sponsors, who were not happy with Martinez’s lack of victories in recent years.
A few months back, Martinez had given up hope on finding a sponsor, saying “The surf world has given up on me. It's a small world and there is this image that all the big bosses of every surf company have of me. I'll remain sponsor-less from a major surf
company the rest of my life.”
On the other hand, the surfer was often amidst controversy due to the nature of remarks he had been passing regarding ASP and their various decisions. Even though he had already been fined on two occasions in the past, he was apparently not one to keep his
emotions in check and did not shy away from criticising ASP.
Lately, Martinez had been criticising ASP for the One World Ranking system that is going to be introduced this September. The new ranking system puts surfers from both, the major as well as minor league, on the same ranking table.
Due to this, a surfer ranking high on the World Title rankings may rank real low in the World Rankings, something that is likely to raise a lot of criticism from other elite ASP Top 34 surfers as well.
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