South Africa’s Michael February finished fifth in the QS10,000 Vans US Open of Surfing at Huntington Beach in California on Sunday to surge into second place on the World Surf League (WSL) Qualifying Series (QS) rankings.
The 24-year-old from Kommetjie in Cape Town continued his superlative 2017 form, winning four consecutive heats against the world’s best surfers to reach the quarter-finals in California. There he lost to Carlos Munoz of Costa Rica in a wave-starved heat where each surfer only had two rides in the 35 minute clash.
February’s haul of US $7,000 (approx. R94,000!) and 5,200 points saw him take the tally from his best five results this season to 14,750 points, overtaking Brazilians Willian Cardoso and Yago Dora and moving up to No2 on the QS leaderboard behind runaway rankings leader Jesse Mendes, also of Brazil.
The Capetonian, who ended 2016 ranked 53rd, has already won 26 competitive heats this year, six more than No8 ranked Hiroto Ohhara (JPN) whose 20 heat wins are the second highest for 2017.
February has featured in the final of four QS1,000 events, winning three, and also reached the semi-finals of QS10,000 Ballito Pro last month.
‘This has been my best start to a season and just thinking about what’s different, we usually have a big gap between events after Australia, but this year we had about four or five events in South Africa,’ said February last week.
‘Just to be able to surf a lot of heats has been nice to get that practice in leading up to Ballito, getting a result there, and really just enjoying surfing, which is always great.’
Based on the 2016 season, February will need a minimum of around 19,000 points to have a chance of finishing in the Top 10 on the QS rankings and joining Jordy Smith on the elite WSL Championship Tour (CT) in 2018.
‘I’m not going to lie and say I don’t want to qualify, everyone on the QS is trying to do that and I’m stoked with results from my last few events and just want to keep the positives alive going into the next few,’ February continued.
He will now be targeting the QS6,000 rated events scheduled for Pantin in Spain, the Azores (where he posted his previous career-best performance with third place last year) and in Maresias, Brazil; along with the QS10,000 in Cascais, Portugal to try an pick up the necessary points.
The final two QS10,000 events in Hawaii in November and December are notoriously difficult, not only featuring some of the world’s biggest and most powerful waves, but also a host of highly competitive local entries and also all the CT members who are in danger of not making the Top 22 cutoff for re-qualification on the elite tour.
The Vans US Open of Surfing was won by Huntington Beach local Kanoa Igarashi (USA) who secured a popular victory over Tomas Hermes (Brazil) in the final to clinch the US $100,000 winner’s pay cheque and 10,000 points that resulted in the Californian rocketing up 66 places to No. 3 on the QS rankings.
Meanwhile, the Vans US Open of Surfing Women’s event, stop No6 of 10 on the WSL Women’s CT, was won by Sage Erickson (US) who secured her maiden CT event victory by outpointing defending event winner Tatiana Weston-Webb (HAW) in the final on Sunday.
Earlier last week, South Africa’s Bianca Buitendag got a start in the event as an injury replacement for Hawaii’s Malia Manuel.
Buitendag finished second in her Round 1 heat and was then eliminated from the event in equal 13th place overall when she narrowly lost to eventual semi-finalist Courtney Conlogue of the US in Round 2.
Picture of February in Californian action courtesy of WSL/Morris