Kelly Slater’s social media feeds, just like yours and mine, have filled up with plenty of gripes about the judging at the Hurley Pro at Trestles over the weekend. Between Jeremy Flores, Tom Carroll, Gabriel Medina, Matt Wilkinson, and Matt Meola, there was a good chunk of recognizable voices chiming in with their discontent or just confusion, with it all reaching a fever pitch when Tanner Gudauskas edged out Gabriel Medina in a Round 3 heat.
The main difference, of course, between Average Joe’s Instagram feed through all of this and Slater’s is that Average Joe doesn’t have a thousand people tagging him in every post, pleading for him to weigh in on the whole ordeal. Let’s not forget, this is the same guy who pulled off the most ridiculous recovery you’ve ever seen in competition and was handed a 4.17 for his efforts in the exact same event a year ago. Not one to be dismissive, Kelly handed us a thorough account of his observations.
Maybe the Most Unexceptional part of it all:
“I also think most people take easy opportunities to make big deals about things that aren’t super important in the scope of their lives. The extent to which people have taken this heat is seriously silly. It was a close heat that could have gone either way.”
Jeremy Flores used his platform to remind us all that this is his livelihood and in the grand scope of his life it is a big deal. But for the rest of the masses thumbing out F-bombs and thinking their “W$L” tags are oh so clever, is this really worth the grief on the 15 year anniversary of 9/11?
