Stu Kennedy and Jordy Smith step into Mr Price Pro Ballito semi-finals – Surfing news
Australia’s Stu Kennedy and South Africa’s Jordy Smith secured their place in the semi-finals at the third of eight stops on the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Prime series, Mr Price Pro Ballito, which continued at the main event site of Ballito,
South Africa, on Saturday, July 6, 2013.
Kennedy got the better of Morocco’s Ramzi Boukhiam in the first quarter-final to earn his place in the next stage of the competition, while removing the latter from the contention for the event title.
The second quarter-final saw Basque Country’s Aritz Aranburu failing to hold his own during his battle against an in-form Smith, consequently getting eliminated from the competition and sending the latter through into the next round.
While the conditions at Ballito had led to an early conclusion of proceedings on Friday, the surf had improved considerably overnight, thus allowing the event organisers to give a green signal to what was expected to be the final day of the proceedings.
Not wanting to waste the opportunity to look at the exciting surfing talent from around the globe engaging in intense and exciting battles, a huge crowd had shown up at Ballito on Saturday.
The opening heat of quarter-finals saw Kennedy and Boukhiam take each other on in a man-on-man battle for the semi-final spot. Both the surfers had done extremely well to land a series of consistent performances to reach this far in the competition and were
understandably looking to go all the way.
As the heat got underway, Boukhiam did not waste too much time to get down to business and hunted down a couple of decent scores to get to a heat-total of 12.16 points.
The effort, however, did not turn out to be enough, as Kennedy managed to surpass him on the scoreboard by getting to a heat-total of 12.70 points. The exciting contest between the Moroccan and Australian surfer consequently finished in favour of the latter.
The second heat saw Smith, currently ASP World no.4, pitted against Aranburu.
With the knowledge of the local waves and support of the local crowd behind him, Smith clearly enjoyed a significant advantage over his rival.
Living up to the expectations, the South African powerhouse landed a superb performance. Making some excellent wave selections and executing a series of powerful carves and turns, Smith got to a heat-total of 16.36 points.
Aranburu found himself answerless to his rival’s onslaught and eventually settled for a two-wave total of 11.34 points, thus getting eliminated from the competition.
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