Tiago Pires prevail in Round 1 of Quiksilver Pro New York – 2011 ASP World Tour
Portuguese Tiago Pires kicked off the latest stop of Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour, Quiksilver Pro New York, with a real nail-biting victory over America’s Damien Hobgood and Australia’s Matt Wilkinson in the tenth heat of Round 1
on Tuesday, September 6, at Long Beach in New York, America.
The success allowed Pires to advance directly to Round 3, while Hobgood and Wilkinson got relegated to Round 2 after finishing in second and third position respectively.
A good result at the current event is extremely crucial for the 31-year-old Pires, who currently rank 32 on the ASP World Rankings. Failure to land in the top 32 will lead to his removal from the World Title campaign after the mid-season rotation that is
due this month.
As the tenth heat kicked off, the 32-year old Hobgood took the lead by scoring 6.00 points off his first wave. A few minutes later, Pires responded by locking a wave to throw down a string of impressive tricks, earning 7.83 points for the effort and taking
the lead.
A few minutes later, the Portuguese added another 4.93 points to his account to climb to a heat-total of 12.76 points. Hobgood required a 6.77 to overtake Pires on the scoreboard. However, he ended up earning 6.73 points off his second business-wave to finish
with a heat-total of 12.73 points, consequently falling 0.03 points short of victory.
Wilkinson put up an outstanding performance during the 30-minute heat, collecting 7.93 and 7.43 points off his top-two waves. However, he ended up suffering interference on Hobgood and got penalised as a result. Despite his impressive performance, he finished
in third place with a heat-total of 11.65 points.
Commenting on the heat later, Pires said, “I've just been feeling good and not thinking too much about points. I just try to think about waves and just surf. I wasn't nervous until Wilko [Matt Wilkinson] got the interference and I got the lead. Wilko kind
of gave the heat to me, it was unlucky for him.”
Hobgood and Wilkinson seemed to be short of luck during the tenth heat, though all is not lost for them as the round was a non-elimination one. Still in contention for the event-title, both of them now need to survive the sudden-death Round 2 to proceed
further in the event.
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