Radical changes in professional surfing.

The WSL has just announced changes to its 2021 Championship Tour season. It will begin this year in December 2020 at Pipeline (for the men) and in Honolua in November (for the women), and will conclude with a one-day surf-off for the world title in September 2021 at a location yet to be determined.

The WSL indicated that this decision is not a new idea, as they had tried it in 2018, however, it did not happen due to external reasons.

The movement for change has been driven by the pandemic.
The 2020 season is officially cancelled. The 2021 Championship Tour will take place between December 2020 and September 2021.

The women's tour will begin in Honduran National Park this November 2020, while the men's tour will begin at Pipeline in December. The Pipe Masters will open the season, not close it. From that point on, men and women will surf the same events. The women will surf at Teahupoo.

In September 2021, the top five men and women will compete for world titles in a single day. Five against four. The winner of that takes three titles. The winner of that takes two. No location has been disclosed, but it will require surfable swells in the Southern Hemisphere to take place.

Some changes to the tour are:

-The WCT will run from December 2020 to August 2021

- The WQS from January 2021 to July 2021

- The Challenger Series from August 2021 to December 2021.

- And the biggest change will take place in mid-2022 when the WCT slots are reduced: men will go from 36 to 24 slots and women from 18 to 12.



“When we first entered this situation, it was a bit like, well, let’s take a really bad situation and see what good we can get out of it,” says Pat O’Connell . “Are we ever going to have this time to focus on one thing and make some of the changes that need to be made? Why don’t we take this time and really make this happen now?” said Pat O’Connell, WSL’s vice president of competition systems.

Moving the tour to a Southern Hemisphere finish in September creates changes. G-Land, J-Bay, Teahupo'o before the final series, wherever it ends. We asked Pat if they had a location and he mentioned,

"We're not doing that. We don't have anything definite yet. I think there are a couple of different conversations we're having. You know, ultimately, I think there are probably around five locations we could use, and any surfer can put their head and brain where it should be."

The WSL's original plan was to hold the finals in the Mentawais, put the surfers on boats, keep the public away, and have them pay to watch. Indonesia immediately comes to mind. Mentawais? Bali? Fiji? Mexico? Lemoore?

Perhaps the biggest change has been this last one, however, almost in small print: midway through the 22nd season, the CT fields will be reduced. On the men's side, 36 will be reduced to 24. For the women, 18 will become 12. This is a major change not only for the events themselves but also for the dynamics of the sport.

When the WSL first took over as direct owners of the league, most expected the first thing they would do was downsize the fields. They had inherited an outdated system that was simply too large; for example, five days of surfing in three days of swell simply didn't make sense. There were multiple rounds with no one losing, events forced to run in poor conditions, the same surfers recycled through the qualifying series instead of new talent, and the fans were the losers. In short, everything needed to be changed.

Almost a decade later, it will happen. "You could say it's fan-driven," says Pat, "but it's really also sporting. It's kind of like, 'Hey, we've upped the ante.' And I think it's going to be, you know... I think the support from the surfers has been interesting." Interesting is the code. We don't know what the WSL had to put on the table to get the surfers to agree. Maybe nothing, just the promise of keeping them employed.

"I think if we were to go the fans' route," says Pat, "some people have suggested going even further than the numbers we've cut, which I don't think is good for the sport. I think ultimately we've struck a very interesting kind of balance, creating the best environment for professional surfing."

Of course, there's a good chance none of these changes will happen... at least not on the announced timeline. Nobody knows where this pandemic is headed.

Find the original article at: https://www.surfer.com/features/wsl-cancels-2020-tour-completely-transforms-format-for-2021-and-beyond/