Smart Kerr now after tour spot for 2018

WORLD Surf League veteran Josh Kerr is a step closer to securing his place on the 2018 championship tour after a canny call to hunt points on the secondary qualifying tour.

Tweed product Kerr is in 35th place on the championship tour after five of the 11 events this season and with only the top 22 surfers gaining automatic qualification for next year, he has gone looking for an insurance policy.

Kerr had pushed into the quarter-finals of the US Open at Huntington Beach, with the competition expected to be completed in the early hours of this morning (Australian time).

The Open is one of the few 10,000-point events on the secondary tour and Kerr will receive at least 5200 points, an effort that will push him into the top 25 on the QS.

If he manages to win past the quarters, Kerr could push as high as the top five in the QS, a result which would help him requalify for the top tier next year.

The 10 best athletes not already qualified for the championship tour gain promotion and Kerr is looking to take down quarter-final opponent, the in-form Brazilian Filipe Toledo, in a bid to advance.

While Australia’s women have bowed out of the US Open, Sunshine Coast youngster Reef Heazlewood made the junior men’s final, eventually finishing second to Hawaii’s Cody Young.

Meanwhile, Tweed’s Dane Pioli has snared his first Australian longboard title since 2010, dominating the final in clean two-foot waves at Cabarita Beach.

Pioli used his powerful style and local knowledge to take top spot, with Victorian Ben Considine winning the logger title.

Considine put on a nearperfect display of retrospective surfing to take the Logs final, posting a two-wave heat total of 18.15 and leaving his fellow finalists in a combination situation. Tully White from Allambie Heights, NSW, won the women’s title ahead of Australian junior champion Emily Lethbridge.

Lethbridge, from Noosaville, made three individual finals at the titles to emerge as a rising star of the sport.