Evan Valiere defeats Taj Burrow in Round 5 of 2011 Billabong Pipe Masters
Hawaii’s Evan Valiere created one of the biggest upsets of the day by defeating Australia’s Taj Burrow in the third heat of Billabong Pipe Masters’ Round 5 that went down at Banzai Pipeline in Oahu, Hawaii, on Friday, December 9.
The Round 5 success carried the local surfer into the Quarter-finals while removing Burrow from the competition in the process.
Billabong Pipe Masters, which is the final stop of the 2011 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour and last leg of Vans Triple Crown of Surfing, had challenged the persistence and endurance of the elite surfers in mammoth-sized waves. Many
of the local surfers had put their local knowledge of the waves to use and dismantled the stars of the current season of ASP World Tour to stay alive in contention for the event title.
The 28-year-old Valiere was among the local talent who were proving to be a force to be reckoned with at the surf reef break of Oahu. Familiarity with the deadly barrels served to give him an edge over Burrow, who was far more experienced and arguably skilled
than him.
Burrow, the former event-champion was being tipped as a heavy favourite in the third heart of Round 5. However, the outcome of the battle turned out to be pretty unexpected, leaving the spectators stunned.
At the battled got underway, the 33-year-old Burrow got off to a decent start, locking his first wave to post a 6.87 on the score-board. Valiere, however, pushed his rival on the back-foot with an excellent 8.70-point wave.
As the heat progressed, the Hawaiian added another 7.33 points to his account, moving to a heat-total of 16.03 points. Burrow faced a demanding task of posting a near-perfect score in his account to have any real chance of claiming victory. However, he failed
to attain the required score and managed to find a mere 4.00-point wave to finish with a heat-total of 10.87 points.
Owing to the superb performance put forward by Valiere and a rather lacklustre response by Burrow, the Hawaiian advance through into the Quarter-final while the latter was forced out of the contention for the event title.
Talking to a reporter later in the day, Valiere said, “When I was watching the heat before mine I didn’t think there would be that many waves out there. It seemed like it was set-after-set in that heat and we were having lots of fun. It’s just really exciting
to get that barrel and I’m putting everything I have in to it.”
The Hawaiian had indeed done well to eliminate someone like Burrow from the competition, but the road was only about to get more bumpy as he headed into the Quarter-finals to meet his next challenge.
For more updates on Round 5 of 2011 Billabong Pipe Masters, stay tuned to bettor.com.
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