Occy Ends Whits’ Roll At Margaret River

By Duncan Horscroft on March 24, 2012 in Sport

It was a case of not quite gone and never forgotten for Bronte’s favourite surfing son Tom Whitaker as he went on a giant-killing rampage in solid, clean 2-metre waves at the Drug Aware Pro at Margaret River in WA on Friday.

After turning it on against the best surfer the world has ever seen, Kelly Slater, in the round of 24, Whits regained his composure to take on – and beat- Adrian Buchan, who is currently ranked equal 5th in the world title rankings.

Whits wasted no time making his presence felt, recording the highest heat score of 9.27 a little over four minutes into the heat to get things rolling.

But Buchan wouldn’t go down without a fight and posted a couple of solid scores midway through the heat to put the pressure on his Bronte rival.

And he nearly pulled it off in the dying seconds of the showdown, posting an 8.93 score on the last wave of the heat.

The heat was almost a mirror of the Slater result when the Floridian scored 8.23 on his last wave only to have Whits knock him off by 0.11. The difference in the Buchan clash was 0.3 of a point.

“It took a while for me to chill out after the Kelly thing,” Whits, who slipped from the elite level of the World Tour last year, said.

“Getting the top score on that first wave certainly helped, although I was hoping Ace didn’t put in a couple more good scores. He came close to getting me on the last wave.”

The quarter final was a veteran’s affair, with Whits facing former world champion Mark Occhilupo, who is showing no signs of slowing down at the age of 45, on Saturday morning.

Both Occy and Whits are former winners at Margaret River and there were no holds barred when the two mates met.

Unfortunately though, it was Occy who came away with the spoils, taking out a high scoring quarter-final 17.63 points to 16.03, before eventually succumbing to young Hawaiian Olamana Eleogram in the semis.

In the final, there was no stopping another Hawaiian young gun, John John Florence, as he trounced Eleogram with two 9-point plus rides to emerge victorious.