In professional surfing they have teams but during tournaments it seems like every man or woman for themselves

Question

I'm a new fan of surfing and I see teams of surfers on a website or in a magazine but whenever I read or see tournaments or heats it seems it's only an individual versus other individuals. Do teams compete against each other?

Answer 1

When surfers are referred to as being on a "team" it is actually their primary sponsor.  This is the person that pays for all of their gear, boards, and trips.  In return, the company gets publicity if their surfer wins tournaments or appears in the big surf magazines.  I have read where a surfer gets a $1000.00 bonus every time he has a picture in a magazine that prominently displays a logo.  For instance, Kelly Slater is on the Quiksilver team and has their stickers on the nose of his board and wears their boardshorts and wetsuits.  He also appears in many of their ads and if you have ever read a surf magazine, you know they are LOADED with ads.

Answer 2

In actual "rated" competition there are no teams, it is all mano y mano.  You can occasionally see some team work being used where one  team mate may help another team mate by keeping a competitor from catching waves by holding wave priority but it is not too common.

Some specialized contests do use team formats such as contests between schools or contests which use the "The Game" format; such as the X-Games.

The World Championship Tour this year will be replacing the Expresion Sessions with a team format event where surfers from the same country will compete against other counrties, with a seperate team for the rookies.  It will not use the The Game format though.

Answer 3

There are teams that compete against eachother.. usually only cali high shcool teams... but professional surf teams arent really teams at all.. they are jsut guys with relatively the same sponsers. they surf for themselves though.. there is no team competitions in pro surfing... only team competition is like i said.. hgih school and other small local tourneys