O’Leary to catch break at J’Bay

IT’S always good to see young Australian surfers emerging and actually making a big impression on the elite championship tour.

The form of Cronulla rookie Connor O’Leary has certainly taken most of the surfing world by surprise this season.

In his first season on the elite tour, the 22-year-old tall, goofy-footed surfer has already made the quarter-finals at one event and the final at the last event in Fiji.

In both those high-end heats he has gone extremely close to taking the win and his style of surfing, which is based around smooth transitions and power, ideally suits the championship tour events.

O’Leary’s pathway to qualifying for the tour was a tough one – he went within one heat of qualifying in 2014 then managed to put that disappointment behind him to easily qualify the following season.

As a tall surfer – he’s 6‘1”, or 185.4cm – surfing on the qualifying series can be hard work with so many events being run in very small surf that disadvantage the taller athlete.

But now he’s made the tour, which runs in far more high performance surf, Connor is absolutely excelling and has established himself in the top 10 in the world rankings.

The next major event for Connor will be Jeffreys Bay in South Africa, famous for sharks and for extremely long perfect peeling point break righthand surf. Connor will be on his backhand at J’Bay, which is probably an advantage on such a long wave and goofy foot surfers have a strong record at the break.

FOUR-DAY FORECAST:

As predicted last week, the biggest swell in more than 12 months greeted us last weekend and there were plenty of big waves along the coast. The great winter conditions will continue with solid swells in the next two days, windy conditions and then clean and excellent waves through the weekend and beyond as winds again tend offshore. A good winter pattern!