Tom Whitaker and Adrian Buchan advance to Round 2 of 2012 Telstra Drug Aware Pro – Surfing News
Australia’s Tom Whitaker and his fellow countryman Adrian Buchan emerged triumphant in the first round (Round of 96) of the 2012 Telstra Drug Aware Pro that went down at Margaret River in Australia on Tuesday, March 20.
A win in their Round 1 heats served to carry both Whitaker and Buchan into the second round (Round of 48). Brazil’s Messias Felix and America’s Gabe Kling successfully extended their life in the event as well after taking second position in the third and
fourth heat respectively.
The surfing conditions prevailing at the event site turned out to be pretty good, offering surfers plenty of opportunities to post a big score on the score-board. The six-to-eight foot waves left the good anticipating a heavy dose of thrilling surfing action.
As the third heat got underway, Whitaker put on a wonderful performance to take down Felix, his compatriot Alex Ribeiro and America’s Brett Simpson in the third heat.
The Australian surfer utilised his local knowledge of the waves to set himself in a position to catch a juicy wave early in the heat and managed to score a 6.50 off it. After a lengthy and determined search, he added an impressive 8.50 to his account to
take his heat-total to 15.00 points. With the score remaining unbeatable throughout the course of the battle, Whitaker walked away with a convincing victory.
Felix struggled to find rhythm in the big waves that were on offer and only managed to find a couple of scores in the four-point range to finish with a heat-total of 8.70 points. The score turned out to be sufficient to take him through into the next round.
Ribeiro and Simpson got removed from the contention for the event title after scoring a heat-total of 7.57 and 5.73 points respectively.
The fourth heat featured a really intense battle between Buchan and Kling, with both the surfers fighting tooth and nail for top honours.
As the four-man battle got underway, Buchan locked his first business-wave in the opening minutes to post a 4.50 on the score-board and went on to add an additional 8.17 points to his account, moving to a heat-total of 12.67 points.
Kling struggled to find a good score in the initial stages of the heat, but made a later charge. Scoring a 7.17 off his first business-wave, he was well set to take the win, but failed to back it up with another good score. Scoring a 5.43 off his second
business-wave, the American surfer finished with a heat-total of 12.60 points.
Australia’s Jay Thompson and Japan’s Masatoshi Ohno rounded out the bottom-two positions with a heat-total of 11.30 and 8.10 points respectively. As a result, both the surfers got eliminated from the race for the event title.
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