Pretty, groomed morning surf rose rapidly on an incoming new swell at Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore on Tuesday as 32 young surfers, nearly all from Hawaii, charged gnarly, cavernous faces, vying for two places as wild-card entrants to the Pipe Masters world championship event.
“Look at the size of these waves, Ross!” World Surf League commentator Strider Wasilewski exclaimed to his colleague Ross Williams, who likened one wipeout to “jumping out of a two-, three-story building” while another ride “really detonated on that reef.”
It was a day in which sleek, barreling waves Williams dubbed “little nuggets” were replaced by jaw-dropping monster tubes, some of which clamped shut and dragged surfers over the shallow reef, breaking boards but miraculously not heads or bodies among the agile, determined contestants.
>> PHOTOS: Pipe Invitational gets underway at Banzai Pipeline
In one stunning semifinal ride, Hawaii’s Eala Stewart made it through what interviewer Barton Lynch called a “really big bomb after taking off right under the lip.”
“Yeah, that drop … I almost got caught up, but it let me in and I was able to keep riding out into the channel afterwards,” said the Waikiki-born Stewart with a diffident grin. “Making it to the finals in the Pipeline Invitational has always been a dream of mine.”
Stewart did make it to the finals, but Hawaii’s Joshua Moniz placed first, scoring two 9.60 rides for a nearly perfect total of 19.20.
“I can’t believe it. I’m pretty stoked,” a stunned-looking Moniz said. “I grew up surfing against all those guys, and they all charged so hard and I was so nervous.”
Moniz said he too had always dreamed of surfing in the Pipe Masters, in which he now looked forward to participating with “my little brother Seth (Moniz, a rookie on the 2019 championship tour and ranked world No. 12).”
Peru’s Miguel Tudela was runner-up, followed by Stewart in third place and Hawaii’s Ian Gentil in fourth.
In the opening heats of the Billabong Pipe Masters by Hydroflask, Moniz is slated to compete against Brazilian Gabriel Moniz, a former Pipe Masters winner and two-time world champ, while Tudela will face Brazilian Italo Ferreira, reigning world champ, who won both the Pipe Masters and the world title in 2019. The 2020 tour was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a separate event, two championship tour veterans — Italian Leo Fioravanti and Australian Mikey Wright, brother of two-time women’s world champ Tyler Wright — competed for a wild card reserved for surfers who left the tour due to injuries.
As competition ended for the day, Fioravanti and Wright were tied. They will have a surf-off before the official opening of the Pipe Masters, whose holding period runs through Dec. 20.
