Power Rankings

American surf journalist has been writing his now-famous Power Rankings for a few seasons now, and they are insightful, incisive, and in some cases rather painful. Lewis knows his way around the World Tour however, and has a few hard0hitting facts behind his essays. One thing for sure is that his Power Rankings get a lot of feedback on the website www.surfline.com

We found his Power Ranking for Jordy for the end of the year last year, around the time of the Billabong Pipe Masters...

The worse Jordy's year got, the easier it was for me to start rooting for him. A little adversity served as an antidote to all the hype - pretend for a moment you'd never heard of Jordy, and his rookie season seems much more impressive. Smith is already a contender at the right points, with batshit crazy performances at Snapper, J-Bay, and Trestles. Jordy looked capable of winning each of those events, but bad luck kept following the kid, culminating in his knee injury in the final at Sunset. Too bad this isn't 1987 - Kong and Jordy could benefit from two consecutive ASP World Tour events at Sunset.

- Lewis Samuels, Surfline.com

03.05.2009