What’s the Point?

The low down on how surfers are judged and the history of the system

Log onto the www.aspworldtour.com website, poke around under "About ASP" and you will find this statement: "There is a certain maturity about ASP these days. Having been around for 28 years now, and experienced the trials and tribulations that come with infancy and adolescence, ASP goes forward into the future with a vision, with a plan, and with a cohesive team of dedicated individuals that will see the dream become a reality." 

And that is true. After almost three decades of contests, squabbling, coup d'etats, tabulating, timing, horns, flags, judging mistakes, breakups, makeups, surfing progression and evolution, the Association of Surfing Professionals has matured into a well-run ship. The ASP operates dozens of surf contests for men and women, shortboarders and longboarders on two levels, and transports the world's best surfers to the world's best waves at the best time of year, then beams live webcasts of great surfing to millions of surfers around the world.

The first professional surfing contest to offer money took place on July 4, 1965, and they were winging it. The Tom Morey Noseriding Invitational accepted a $50 entry fee from 24 of the top hotdoggers, and returned a total of $1500 in prize money.  Morey made up the rules as he went along, pretty much. The object of this first contest was to spend as much time in the possible on the front third of the surfboard - marked off before the contest started - and this time was measured with a stopwatch.

Through the 60s there were more surf contests around Hawaii, California and the world. The prize money never got above $10,000 for any event and by 1970, surf contests became the antithesis of cool in California and disappeared, while professional events continued in Hawaii and began to flourish around the world.

In 1973, the Bells Beach Easter contest became the first professional contest in Australia and remains the longest-running event into the 21st Century. In 1976 Hawaiian surfers Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick organized International Pro Surfers, which stitched together 14 contests scattered from Hawaii to South Africa to Australia to Brazil under one roof, and awarded a World Champion at the end of the season. Total prize money for the first year was $77,650 and Australian Peter Townend was the first World Champion.

The World Champions through the rest of the 1970s were South African Shaun Tomson, Australian Wayne Bartholomew and then Australian Mark Richards won the Title in 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982. 

In 1982, the Australian-backed Association of Surfing Professionals usurped the IPS in a sort of coup that caused no shortage of bad blood. Through the 80s, the World Title became more and more valuable, as Australian Tom Carroll was usurped by Tom Curren, and Australians Damien Hardman, Barton Lynch and Martin Potter also claimed titles. During the 1980s, there was just one professional tour on one level. The Top 16 then the Top 32 surfers were seeded into every event, to compete against unrated surfers who qualified through the Trials.

By 1990, total prize money was $2,145,000 and the ASP split into the two-tier system in 1992 to accommodate the exploding population of professional surfers around the world. In the two-tier system - which is still being used to great effect - thousands of surfers compete in dozens of World Qualifying Series events around the world, rated from one to six stars. Surfers on the WQS accumulate points with the goal of making the World Championship Tour in which the top 45 surfers are joined by three wildcard competitors who compete in a series of 11 events that determine the World Champion. 

As surfing has progressed, so has judging, sometimes behind the times, sometimes leading surfing into new realms of performance. In the 60s and 70s, surfers were judged on a points-per-move basis, with a set number of points for a bottom turn, a top turn, a tuberide. This system was a little too stiff and didn't account for style or intensity or a lot of factors that are hard to enumerate but make surfing great, so by the late 70s this system had been replaced by other number systems which threw together the intensity, quality, style and radicalness of a ride and added it all up to one score on a 1 - 10 or 1 - 100 scale.

The present ASP system has a revolving team of five judges awarding scores from 1 to 10, overseen by a Head Judge. For each ridden wave, the high and low scores are thrown out and the average of the remaining scores is taken to award a point value to every ridden wave. According to the ASPWorldTour.com website: "The new ASP judging criteria was rolled out at all events in 2005. The changes evolved from a year long monitoring process, primarily overseen and driven by ASP Head Judge Perry Hatchett's desire to both reflect contemporary cutting edge performance surfing and capture the spirit of free surfing that is the essence of performance surfing. Gleaning valuable data from free-wheeling events such as the Foster's Expression Sessions and Kelly Slater's Fiji experimental event, Perry and other members of ASP's Technical Committee, including WCT surfers, set out to free up the criteria with the dual objectives of further rewarding progressive surfing and introducing a reward system based on demonstrating variety of repertoire and linking maneuvers together, still in the critical sections of the wave, in a seamless flow of power and speed. The results should be extraordinary, check it out: A surfer must perform radical controlled maneuvers in the critical section of a wave with Speed, Power and Flow to maximize scoring potential. Innovative / Progressive surfing as well as Variety of Repertoire ( maneuvers ),will be taken into consideration when rewarding points for waves ridden.  The surfer who executes this criteria with the maximum Degree of Difficulty and Commitment on the waves shall be rewarded with the higher scores."

The current ASP rule book is a 12-page PDF, which covers every fact of professional surfing at the World Qualifying Series and World Championship Tour level: priority, snaking, gambling, heat lengths, judging. Condensing all that to explain the Nova Schin event. It is a World Championship Tour event, in which the Top 45 (along with three wildcard competitors) compete for money and ratings points that determine the World Champion.

The First Round is 16 three-man heats of 35 minutes. The surfers who place first  in Round One go directly to Round Three, while the surfers who finish second and third go to a Second Round of 16 two-man heats that are also 35 minutes long. The losers of the Second Round heats are awarded 33rd place, 225 points.The winners of the Second Round Heats then meet the winners of the First Round heats in 16 two-man heats. The losers of the Third Round heats are given 17th place, 410 points while the winners move on to 8 two-man heats in the Fourth Round.

The losers of Round Four are awarded equal 9th place and 600 points while the winners go to four, two-man quarterfinal heats. The losers of the quarterfinals are awarded equal fifth, 732 points while the winners go to two 35-minute, man on man semifinal heats. The losers of the semifinals heats are given equal 3rd, 876 points while the winners of the semis meet in the final.

Winning a WCT event these days is worth 1200 points, while second place is worth 1032 points.

In the past, heats were decided by tabulating the best four and best three waves but beginning in 2005, the ASP now adds up the two highest scores in a heat to determine a winner.

After more than 40 years of pro surfing, this judging criteria and competitive structure is considered the fairest and most progressive and is partially responsible for the incredibly high level of surfing in the world today, and the exciting competitiveness of pro surfing contests around the world.