Parko powered his way to victory, his smooth powerful style earning him a convincing heat win over Dusty Payne. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Kelly Slater put on an awesome display of competitive surfing wowing crowds that flocked to the sands of Snapper Rocks to watch the surfing icon in action. Photo © ASP/CESTARI

Joel Parkinson dominated his round 1 heat at the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast advancing into round three. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Despite his lightening fast backhand attack Travis Logie suffered a round 2 elimination leaving him with a disappointing equal 33rd result. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Garret Parkes breaks yet another board as Mick Fanning smashes yet another Snapper wall to win the heat Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Jeremy Flores captured a narrow heat victory over Damien Hobgood, edging out the America by less than a point. Photo © ASP/CESTARI

Taj Burrow got his own back on Adriano De Souza, advancing into the quarterfinals in first place. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Mick thrived on the lower tide with the sand dredging barrels right in front of the crowd and advances straight to Round 3. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Former ASP World Champion CJ Hobgood won his round 2 heat over wildcard surfer Blake Ainsworth to earn his spot into round 3. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Ace Buchan getting vertical in his heat. He made it all the way to round 4 before losing to Adriano in a buzzer beater. Photo © ASP/CESTARI

As the tide continued to drain with waves dredging on the sand bank Bede Durbidge locked in one of the best tube rides of Round 3. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Taj Burrow claims his victory at the Quiksilver Pro. Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

Jordy Smith placed 2nd in the Quiksilver Pro final and in doing so moves to 2nd on the ASP World Tour ratings. Photo © ASP/CESTARI

Could this be Taj's year? Photo © ASP/KIRSTIN

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Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast Wrap Up & Photos

Posted on March 4th, 2010 by JZ

Well, the first contest of the year is over and done with and we have a new number one surfer in the rankings. His name, Taj Burrow, and with this win, it makes three in a row for the 13 year veteran. Taj took down the last contest of the 2009 season, at the Pipeline Masters and more recently won the 4-Star WQS Breaka Burleigh Pro, just over a week ago. The way he’s been surfing is just insane and it’s going to be interesting to see how long he can hold that number one spot for.

The rest of the contest saw some real sick heats and a few unlikely upsets during the middle rounds. Most of last year’s top 10 were out by the time the quarters rolled around. Damien Hobgood, Mick Fanning and Kelly Slater all lost their Rond 4 heats. CJ was out in Round 3 with a loss to Daniel Ross, and in the quarters, Adriano went down against Taj, and Parko lost to Dane. Along with the top guys out, all the Snapper Rock local’s were out too, and Parko wasn’t too happy about it. After his loss, Parko said, “It’s a bit of a bummer because the local boys have had kind of a strangle hold on the event at Snapper and to lose that is a little bit depressing I guess but next year for sure we’ll be back,”.

One of the most amazing heats I’ve seen in a while was that quarter final heat between Parko and Dane Reynolds. Both guys stepped up their level of surfing and were laying down some serious maneuvers. Parko had two high 8′s but he just couldn’t catch up to Dane who’s top two scoring waves were a 9.27 and 9.93. Dane went on to face Jody in the semis, but couldn’t find his grove throughout the heat and let Jordy take the win.

While we’re at it, let’s give it up to Jordy Smith. The guy is really starting to figure out how to compete and it is obviously paying off for him. I love seeing the younger guys fight their way through the contest and get good results. Jordy took down some big names, including the one and only, nine times world champ, Kelly Slater, in Round 4 and then knocked off Bede Durbidge in the quarters. It really looked like he was going to take down Taj in the finals, as he had a couple good scores and Taj had only 1 low scoring wave for a while, but Taj picked off a couple nicer set waves and ran away with the heat.

If you missed any of the contest, you can watch all the heats on demand on the contest’s website and we will be posting highlights in the videos section. The next contest of the year is the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach, Australia and the waiting period starts on March 30th. For the complete list of this year’s contests click here and make sure to keep up on SURFBANG for more updates.

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