It wasn’t like the Lululemon Maui Pro really needed any more of a buildup or to have its anticipation stoked, but that’s what two consecutive lay days have managed to do for this final event of the World Surf League Women’s Championship Tour.

Even before the year began, Honolua Bay on Maui lined up as a centerpiece of the tour, a point on the calendar to be circled as the provisional qualifier for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where the sport makes its much-awaited Olympic debut.

But throw in a points race so tight that any of the three highest-ranked surfers, all of them Americans — Carissa Moore, Lakey Peterson and Caroline Marks — could potentially win the world championship, leaving one of them squeezed out of a U.S. Olympic berth and the possibility of the 17-year-old Marks of Florida becoming the youngest world title holder in history, and this has the potential to be the most consequential women’s pro surf meet since the tour was established.

With 14 of the top 15 ranked women’s pro surfers on hand, those were just some of the story lines that were to have begun unfolding Monday, until the meet was pushed back due to small surf, organizers said. “We are going to get waves, it just depends on when they get here,” Jessi Miley-Dyer, WSL vice president of Tours and Competition, said in a release.

“We have a bit of hope for some waves around Thanksgiving, but definitely the first week of December we look like we have some considerable swell (coming),” Miley-Dyer said.

The No. 2-ranked Peterson ratcheted much of the drama by defeating Moore in the semifinals of the MEO Rip Curl in Portugal last month. Had the Punahou School graduate won there, she would have clinched her fourth world championship and an Olympic berth.

And a win on Maui would assure Moore a return to the throne. But anything less opens up a series of possible scenarios for both challengers, especially Peterson, a Californian who also defeated her for the Margaret River Pro title in June and the Fresh Water Pro championship in September.

Moore has dominated at the Maui Pro, where she is a three-time winner and a crowd favorite, but she faces an all-Hawaii opening heat when things get underway with Coco Ho and Summer Macedo.

“I love Honolua Bay. It is one of the most beautiful, challenging (and) powerful, but high-performance, breaks I’ve ever surfed,” Moore said. “And it is home for me, which makes it extra special. Hawaii is a place where you want to show up and show that you can surf and perform, because this is the birthplace of surfing and where some of the best waves in the world are.”

Moore’s distinction of being the youngest women’s world surfing champion, something she achieved at age 18 in 2011, is under threat from Marks, who won’t hit that age until Valentine’s Day.

“It is so rad to be in this position,” Marks said in a WSL interview. “My goal this year was to be in the top five and to win an event and, now, I’m in the top three, I’ve won two events and am still in the running for a world title and the Olympics, so I am so excited. It has been an incredible year and I’m looking forward to this week.”

Moore said, “I am so excited for this last event. How cool that I am in the world title race with Lakey and Caroline. There is so much on the line.”

Now, all the event needs is to actually get underway.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.