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PEAK TIMING
David Weare wins Body Glove Surfbout at Lowers
The Lower Trestles Body Glove Surfbout presented by Adio should have been a Californian's event. Aside from past Hawaii and East Coast victories by world champs Andy Irons and Kelly Slater, the big check has always ended up in the hands of Lowers regulars. Names like Machado, Knox, Beschen, Booth and even Fletcher litter the Surfbout's list of champions in its long running history. And judging from the lineup of hard-hitting Westsiders in the closing rounds of this year's event, one would presume history would again repeat itself.
Friday, April 29: South Africa's David Weare must have felt a pang of fear when he saw Rob Machado walking out on the cobbles, yellow jersey in hand and quietly dissecting the rising south swell with that deadly cool confidence of his. Who wouldn't? It seemed "The Mob" had turned his grim lot in the WQS's rat pack Round of 160 into a sort of three-day clinic on Lowers deconstruction. Since Wednesday, young David Weare and the rest of the surfing world watched Machado advance again and again with maniac precision. And now, in his first heat in the Round of 64, Weare had to face off with the beast himself. "What luck?" the comparatively green South African must have been thinking as the Southern California sky darkened into a stormy, heavy gray, "I've been seeded into impossibility."
Indeed, Machado came out throwing, leaving everyone choking on too many needed points and too little time to get them -- just as he had been doing since Wednesday. Everyone except Weare that is, who had not come all the way to the States to go down in his first heat, despite the impossibilities he had to endure. Weare proved an observant pupil of the life-long Lowers standout, skillfully patching together a Mob-esque kind of power and above-the-lip surfing that the rampy rights and lefts of Trestles demand, ending the heat in second, close at Machado's heels with a combined 10.17 to the Californian's 14.33.
Saturday, April 30: There was no doubt David Weare found hope in his fellow female competitor Silvana Lima in the SG Lowers Pro, which by Saturday's opening quarter-finals had been emptied of mainland dominance, save for San Diego's Julia Christian and Kyla Langen. The lone Brazilian overpowered global powerhouses like Megan Abubo, Marie Pierre Abgrall, Serena Brooke and Jessi Miley-Dyer from her first heat clear through the semis. Lima's calculated gouges on the right-hander's pouring across the Lowers reef earned her a winning streak that paralleled the contest-brilliance of Mr. Machado's, leaving her only the finals where she made her performance at the 2005 SG Lower's Pro a perfect game and her pockets $3,500 thicker.
Then, in Men's Semi 1, Weare and Machado meet again. The Mob -- nervous perhaps -- stole a glance at young David, thinking about how this new face had blown through his Round 7 heat just short of Tour veteran Tim Curran, then folded 2001 World Champion C.J. Hobgood, Hawaii's Pancho Sullivan and Australian Leigh Sedley in the quarter-finals. The two-to-three foot surf was good -- classic Lowers, in fact -- but inconsistent, every here and there pushing in lengthy right walls and shorter, bowlier lefts. Rob had seen these conditions a million times and he worked them as smooth as ever, but it seemed that though he could ignore the feeling of fatigue from three days of non-stop heat surfing, he couldn't avoid the fact that, though he would advance to the finals, he had just gotten second behind a progressively more lethal Weare -- now a threat to the Westside's reign on the Body Glove Surfbout history books.
The Finals: The California contingent had already begun to break down. It was only heat-beaten Machado and the always-potent Laguna Beach hero Pat O'Connell left. But there they were, ready to fight -- Adrian Buchan of Australia and Weare had infiltrated the local legends' finals stronghold, frothing and hungry to bag the 10 G's worth of Surfbout bounty and 1500 'QS points. And as Lowers lit up in a display of back-to-back three foot sets, stacking perfect lines and se
nding the boys scrambling, Machado and O'Connell couldn't connect like the young-guns. Though Buchan gave Weare a scare with a 9.10 right-hander late in the heat, Weare held him off, comboing two of the set waves, blasting huge fins-free roes and patching together the Lowers rights with veteran-like form for a combined score of 17.06. His dominance was getting stronger and time was running out, leaving O'Connell, Buchan and the die-hard Rob Machado to fight over seconds.
"It's an awesome experience." Weare said of surfing with the Lowers veterans as he stood at the water's edge mobbed by the press, "Especially with these guys -- it's amazing." Of course, the new king of the Body Glove Surfbout's had to share his feelings on taking the title out of the U.S. and beating Rob to the big check? "I'm just stoked," Weare says, "stoked it happened to me."
BODY GLOVE SURFBOUT PRESENTED BY ADIO RESULTS:
1. David Weare
2. Adrian Buchan
3. Pat O'Connell
4. Rob Machado
SG LOWERS PRO RESULTS:
1. Silvana Lima
2. Rebecca Woods
3. Laurina McGrath
4. Jessi Miley-Dyer
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Andrew S. Lewis
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