Joel Parkinson

J-BAY FROM JOEL’S LOUNGE

Posted by Sean Doherty in Photos, Video, World Tour

Consigned to the lounge with his gammy foot, Joel watched every heat at J-Bay. Here’s his rap on what he saw…

THE WAVES

The waves were epic. That first day looked unreal and it made it a hard contest for me to watch. The waves looked a lot like last year – my kind of conditions, fast with long walls – and it was definitely the kind of waves I’d been surfing at home before I cut my foot. I found myself mindsurfing everything. The first four heats were really hard to watch because I was getting pissed off that I wasn’t there and it was perfect, but after I got over it I started analysing everyone’s moves and strategies. I was the supercoach on the lounge. I learned a lot sitting on the couch and watching it, all the strategies and tactics from a new angle, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

THE RIGHT WAVES

It’s a hard wave to surf when it’s a bit bigger. When it’s four foot every wave is good, but when it’s six foot like it was on the first day some of them can be burgery. You really had to pick your waves. But it’s more the man-on-man heats when you see wave choice becoming really crucial and there were plenty of guys making mistakes… which is easy to say from my lounge. I was ripping on my lounge. There were a couple of things I pinpointed that guys should and shouldn’t have done and it cost them the heat. Bottle did all the hard work against Adriano but then let himself down by taking the wrong wave. There were a lot of crucial wave choice decisions that cost guys heats. You really see the pressure element at J-Bay. Because they’re generally long period swells and you can have long lulls, the scoreboard pressure at J-Bay is really important. If you’ve got one good score at J-Bay you can apply pressure and force the other guy into a dud wave and get him panicking. The scoreboard pressure is one thing I really noticed when I was watching heats, playing the chess game from the couch.

ANDY

Andy was great. He definitely had flow for sure. J-Bay was never his prime wave when he was on tour, despite the fact he won out there before. It was never his comfort zone. It was no Teahupoo for him. Watch him though in this next contest. If they get some good waves this year in Tahiti look out. One thing that never really changes with your surfing is your ability to ride the barrel, and I reckon in Tahiti he’s going to find himself in his first final series for the year, for sure. Every event this year he’s looked better and better, and if he manages to make a final somewhere soon or even wins one, then look out. He’s the kind of guy who feeds on confidence.

DANE

Dane lives by the kind of surfing we saw in J-Bay, it’s all or nothing and that’s what you’re always going to get. He can do every move in the book and he goes for it, but if he doesn’t make it he’s going to end up with a shocker heat like he had against Taj. He probably only needs to pull himself back 10 per cent in some situations and he’d be winning some heats he’s losing, but the way he surfs he’s not going to do it. That’s not Dane. And if he did pull it back then you wouldn’t be seeing those heat scores of 18 or 19, you’d be seeing 15s and 16s, and then again it’s not quite Dane. He’s still the most exciting surfer to watch on tour and he always goes for it… whether he makes it or not depends on how he’s felling.

KELLY

I was pretty surprised Kelly lost. I thought he was looking real comfortable and calm in his first heat, and when he’s comfortable and calm at J-Bay he’s gonna win. But it didn’t happen against Shaun [Holmes]. Maybe he was thinking too much about Shaun. He’s such a nemesis out there and he gets guys so spooked that maybe he got in Kelly’s head a bit. Or maybe Kelly just had a shocker. I wonder if it was board choice even… his board didn’t look that great to me. Sometimes J-Bay doesn’t have a pocket to surf in, and when that happens and you get longer barrelling sections you can see which boards are really going well and which ones aren’t, and it looked to me like Kelly’s board wasn’t really working for him.

UNDERDOGS

Melling obviously was good, and Bottle was really good too. Shouldn’t be a surprise, they’re both pointbreak surfers and should be suited to J-Bay. In that one heat Bottle showed us what he can really do, he showed how good a pointbreak surfer he is. The Burleigh came out in him. But J-Bay’s inconsistency got him in the end… it got a few guys who were in form. Guys who just didn’t get the chance to ride waves. J-Bay can do that to you; you can be the most in-form surfer in the contest but if you don’t catch waves you won’t win a heat.

MICK

Damo has got some form at J-Bay, he’s no slouch out there, but in saying that you’d think going up against Mick, well, you’d have your money on Mick. But I thought Mick would have surfed a little better – read that it was a slow heat and caught a few more waves because he’s so good at turning four and five waves into sixes and sevens. He kinda waited for solid waves I guess, but if he had of surfed what was in front of him he would have won. No one surfs those little rock barrels better than Mick, he’s so fast and can fit turns in quicker than anyone. But in saying that Damo surfed the heat – and the whole contest – well I thought.

BEST HEAT

The Bede and Jordy semi, for sure… a bit of controversy. Jordy definitely got the score he needed on his last wave, but I thought maybe he should’ve needed more. Did he deserve what he got with his Superman on the first score? Probably not. I only watched it once and haven’t watched a replay, so that’s off one viewing, and there’s a big difference between watching it on TV and watching it live on the point. I might have given it to him if I’d been there, who knows. But I’m not much of a Superman fan. I don’t really get off on them. You might as well do a double grab. They just look a bit ugly to me. But it was great to see Jordy get a win, and to get his first win at home too must have been incredible for him. You could see how much it meant to him.

THE WORLD TITLE

Jordy’s got to number one but it’s the one time of the year you don’t want to be. The first thing I thought about when Jordy won and was that first place on the ratings was that he’s going to draw Manoa Drollet at Chopes. And Kelly went down a bit, so did Mick, so they’ll avoid Manoa. You can’t forget how gnarly that guy is at Teahupoo, especially if there’s swell. Once they get to Trestles I think those guys are really going to start firing up – Mick, Kelly, Taj and Jordy are all amazing out there. From Trestles it’s heading into such a heavy stretch. As hungry as Jordy was heading into J-Bay, he’s gong to have to be just as hungry coming into Pipe in four months time if he’s going to win the title, and there’s a lot of surfing between now and then. Every one of those guys still has a good chance at winning the title and I wouldn’t even be looking at the ratings and the numbers right now. They don’t mean a lot.

J-BAY NOT FAR AWAY

Posted by Sean Doherty in Video, World Tour

SNAPPING FOR SNAPPER

Posted by Sean Doherty in Photos, World Tour

The new season starts in a week, how are you feeling about it?

It’s a week?

It is.

Wow. I feel good. Really good.

How about compared to the state you were in this time last year?

Compared to last year… I think I was a bit more anxious and nervous last year. The lessons I’ve learned and the knowledge I’ve accumulated in the last year means I’m way more relaxed now than I was back then. Last year I put a lot in, and I was a bit unsure how I was going to go. I’d put so much in that I was getting a bit unsure whether I was doing the right thing, unsure of whether I was trying too hard. Now I feel like I can juggle it all better. One bad surf would get to me at the start of last year. Everything had to be 100 per cent on. This year I know I just need to have a couple of key little points ticked off leading up to the event and everything else should just fall into place. The next week will just be light training and some enjoyable surfs. I’m not going to oversurf this week, that’s a key. I’ve found a couple of good boards, so I’ll just do a little time on them this week.

Lessons learned from last year?

It was an emotional rollercoaster, last year. At the end of last year I had a straight month of everything doing laps in my mind. I learned you have to be able to expel negativity out of your mind, and you’ve got to find ways of quickly gaining confidence in situations.

Has it been hard to bounce back after losing the title last year?

Yep, and it took me a while. It wasn’t till the New Year started that a bit of the heartache went away, then when I started training for this year a bigger chunk of the heartache went away, and when we got that first swell and I started surfing for a new year I felt like it was almost completely gone. I’m sure I’m always going to have a taste in my mouth, I got so close, but I can’t ever dwell on the bad things that happened last year. The good things I can take out of it is that I rode that rollercoaster last year, I went to hell and back on it, and if you put me on it again then I’ve already been there and know how to ride it. Anything in between those extremes two will be butter.

How’s your surfing program been going?

January was pretty bad for waves here on the Gold Coast, but the first 10 days of February were really good. I surfed heaps of Snapper, so I don’t even really need to surf it that much now leading into the contest. Once a week has been plenty. It’s a zoo. I got up eight early mornings out of those 10 days of swell in the dark, and five of those days I surfed snapper from quarter-to-five till six-thirty. That’s when you can ride it properly; you’re surfing it with 10 guys and you can tune in so much quicker than surfing it Sunday lunchtime, which is impossible. During that swell there were no pros here, it was so much more relaxed. Now I can’t even get a park down there. I feel like the circus arrives and I back off. I’m so tuned with that wave after those morning sessions that I’d rather get to know D-Bah a bit better, because we might end up around there. If I surf Snapper once a week I just try and find a window where I can have a quick surf and enjoy it.

Is the bank at Snapper in shape?

I haven’t surfed it for four or five days, but when I surfed it last weekend it was pretty nice. It’s deep out the back, which means if it’s six feet it will handle it. A lot of the banks we have around here now from those huge swells last year that destroyed everything are all really deep, which means that if there is six or eight foot of swell they’ll handle it.

Andy’s been around… you guys been hanging out?

Yeah, been surfing with Andy a fair bit. When he first got here three weeks ago we were surfing together most days, but I haven’t seen much of him the past 10 days. I’ve been in Japan, and this week leading into the contest I think we’ll do our own thing. I can’t wait to see how he goes.

And what about the crop of new guys on tour?

Wow, there are some really good names in there. Owen, I think, will be unreal, as will Dusty. There aren’t too many guys, the real freaks, who can jump on tour straight away and do well. I struggled to requalify on my first year. Kelly was a freak back in the day and he won the title, but first time around the tour can be overwhelming and a bit different, and it takes a bit of time to adjust. There’s nowhere to hide when you surf a heat. I’m not saying they’ll struggle, but look back at Adriano. He got a third here in his first event and didn’t make a heat for a while after that. The tour first year is tough, but it’s changed this year with it going back to 32. Everyone might be in a new boat. If it had been the same as it’s been for the past 10 years I think we’d have a big advantage over the new guys, knowing the ins and outs, but we’re a little more in uncharted waters. But the names that are there, I don’t think it will take long for them to be up there challenging.

And a bolter amongst the guys already on tour? Someone who might surprise us all?

I’d like to say Jordy, but sometimes I think it depends what mood he’s in. When he’s on he’s unbelievable. At the start of last year he started to learn how to switch himself on and off a bit. His surfing has always impressed me.

Been tinkering with your boards at all?

My boards haven’t changed radically, but my fins have. I’ve been playing around with my fins. JS has started a new fin company called Kinetic Racing and he’s got a model that’s my usual fin, just core-filled and in a slot fin, and I’ve really been enjoying riding it. I’ve been moving them forward and putting bigger ones in the back. I’m riding a 6’2”, and one board might be loose and slippery with the fins right up front, and then I’ve got a couple that are set back and tighter. It’s been great playing with them ‘cause I’ve ridden fixed fins for so long now.

And this will be the first year you’ve been on tour and Perry Hatchett hasn’t been the head judge. What are you expecting?

I’ve been trying to think of life without Perry there and it’s hard. I don’t really know Richie, the new guy that well, but the panel that has been there the last few years is all still there. I just hope the experience is all still there with them.

The ASP Tour copped criticism in certain circles last year about not rewarding progressive surfing enough. Do you think there will be a reaction to that this year, especially with a few air specialists making the cut?

It’s always in the front of my mind to make my surfing more progressive. I think every guy on tour is trying to make their surfing more progressive. But progressive surfing isn’t just airs and tricks. Progressive surfing is bigger harder faster as well. The worst thing you want to see is someone getting a 7.5 for six taps to the beach, while a guy who does two huge turns gets the same score.

Good luck mate.