Taylor Knox and Jeremy Flores bounce back in Round 2 of 2012 Hurley Pro
America’s Taylor Knox and France’s Jeremy Flores emerged triumphant in their respective Round 2 heats at the 2012 Hurley Pro, the sixth of ten stops on the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship Tour, which continued at the iconic
Lower Trestles in California, America, on Monday, September 17.
Knox got the better of Australia’s Owen Wright in the third heat, thus securing his place in the third round while bringing the competition to a premature end for his rival.
The fourth heat saw Flores barely defeat America’s Patrick Gudauskas. The result of the heat sent him through into the next round while removing the latter from the contention for the event title.
The three-to-four foot waves on offer at the primary event site seemed like an ideal canvas for yet another day of exciting performances and thrilling contests between the best surfers from around the globe.
The third heat placed Knox against Wright in a one-on-one bout for the Round 3 spot. The contest turned out to be quite interesting with the young Australian surfer making a desperate effort to reap a big score off the waves, but managing to collect only
a 6.83 and 3.77 off his top-two waves to finish with a heat-total of 10.60 points.
Knox struggled to find a good wave for most part of the heat as well, earning a mere 4.83 off his first business-wave, but stepped-up in the final stages of the heat to find a 7.33-point ride, which took him to a heat-total of 12.16 points. The score proved
adequate to earn him the win.
The fourth heat featured a nail-biting contest, with both Flores and Gudauskas fighting tooth-and-nail until the last minute to distance themselves from elimination.
Gudauskas got off to a solid start, scoring a 7.93 off his first business-wave, but Flores snatched the lead away from him after earning a 7.87 for his first business-wave and went on to back it up with an excellent 9.43-point ride, thus reaching a heat-total
of 17.30 points.
The American surfer made a desperate effort in the dying minutes of the heat, locking a wave and unloading a series of exquisite tricks, but it only managed to earn him an average score of 9.00 from the judges, thus causing him to finish 0.37 points short
of the required score. As a result, the result of the battle came out in Flores’ favour.
“Pat (Gudauskas) is an amazing air surfer and I was expecting him to do crazy airs,” Flores said after the heat. “I didn’t want to fall into that game because I’m not really an air guy. I wanted to show a difference in my carving turns and mix it up a bit.
I know the first guy I saw doing that under-the-lip turn was Andy {Irons}. It’s just this one turn that I can do and I just stick to a few of my tricks whenever I need to do them or need a score.”
The crowd could not have hoped for a heavier dose of thrilling action than the one that they were getting as the second day of 2012 Hurley Pro continued at the high-performance beach-break of Lower Trestles.
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