Mark Occhilupo and Tom Whitaker step into the 2012 Telstra Drug Aware Pro Quarter-finals
Australia’s Mark Occhilupo and his fellow countryman Tom Whitaker won their respective Round 5 (Round of 16) heats of the 2012 Telstra Drug Aware Pro that went down at Margaret River in Western Australia on Friday, March 23.
Occhilupo made Hawaii’s Fredrick Patacchia bow out to him in the third round, whereas Whitaker got the better of his compatriot Adrian Buchan in the fourth heat of Round 5 to make their way through into the Quarter-finals.
The thrilling action continued at the primary event site on the latest day of the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Prime rated event as the top surfers from around the world took each other on in man-on-man battles to get their hands on the coveted
Quarter-final spot.
Squaring off with Patacchia in the third heat, the 1999 ASP World Champion Occhilupo found his hands full. Both two powerhouse goofy-footers fought tooth and nail in wind-affected afternoon conditions. The frequency of five-to-six waves that had been appearing
at the event site since the morning had considerably decreased, leaving the surfers in a desperate situation.
Occhilupo got off to a decent start, scoring a 5.67 off his first business-wave before adding an impressive 7.50 points to his account to finish with a heat-total of 13.17 points.
Patacchia did not look too comfortable with the conditions and struggled to find his rhythm in the early stages of the heat. However, he stepped up to score a 5.00 off his first business-wave and went on to earn an 8.00-point wave despite his rival holding
priority. However, he was unable to increase his score further and consequently surrendered the Quarter-final spot to Occhilupo due to a 0.17-point deficit.
“I got out of jail in that one,” Occhilupo said. “I was pretty comfortable at the start because Freddy [Patacchia] was having a bit of a shocker. Then he got an 8-point-ride under my priority. That’s probably happened about 200 times in my career and I went
on to lose the heat about 180 of those times. The ocean went flat and he just couldn’t find another score. I got lucky.”
The fourth heat featured yet another nail-biting contest, this time Whitaker and Buchan keeping each other busy until the end.
Whitaker drew first blood with a near-perfect 9.27-point wave and latter added an additional 6.83 points to his account to get to a heat-total of 16.10 points.
Buchan remained right on his heels, scoring a 6.83 off his first business-wave, while backing it up with an 8.93 to his account of his second business-wave in the dying minutes of the heat to finish with a heat-total of 15.76 points, consequently allowing
Whitaker to advance through into the Quarter-finals.
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