PUPUKEA — Teenage Canadian surfer Erin Brooks made it to the round of 16 Wednesday at the Lexus Pipe Pro, surviving two rounds before losing to Australian Molly Picklum.
The competition on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, famed for its Banzai Pipeline, is the opening event of the World Surf League's elite Championship Tour.
The 17-year-old Brooks became the first Canadian to earn full-time status on the Championship Tour by finishing in the top five of the second-tier Challenger Series last year. She won in her only previous appearance on the Championship Tour as a wild card, defeating Olympic silver medallist Tatiana Weston-Webb of Brazil last August in the final of the Fiji Pro.
Brooks defeated Picklum en route to the Fiji win with the 22-year-old Australian ending up third. But Picklum, who was runner-up in the Hawaii event last year, had the last laugh Wednesday.
Surfers are judged on their two best scores during the heats, with Picklum finishing at 10.83 and Brooks at 7.33.
Picklum had the edge in the 40-minute round-of-16 heat, pulling further ahead with a 6.83 wave. Brooks' best was a 5.00 at the end of the heat.
Picklum will face Costa Rica's Brisa Hennessy in the quarterfinal. Hennessy, 25, finished fourth in the WSL Finals last year while Picklum was fifth.
Brooks will finish ninth in the season opener.
Brooks had to wait her turn in Hawaii with conditions preventing competition for six days. Brooks and her coach were up every morning at around 6 a.m. local time to be ready for when the heats continued Wednesday.
At the start of the 18-woman competition, the top two from each of the opening-round heats advance to the round of 16 while the third-place surfer is relegated to the elimination round. The top two from each of the elimination-round heats also move on to the round of 16. The third-place finishers are eliminated, placing tied for 17th.
From the elimination round, the competition moves into the bracket stage with the round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and final.
Brooks finished third in her opening heat earlier Wednesday behind Americans Gabriele Bryan, who was seventh on tour last season, and Sawyer Lindblad, last year's rookie of the year.
Brooks then finished runner-up to 19-year-old American Bettylou Sakura Johnson in the elimination round with 34-year-old Australian Sally Fitzgibbons placing third. Fitzgibbons finishes tied for 17th overall in the event.
Bryan edged Lindblad 7.67 to 7.66 while Brooks was last at 6.83 in their opening heat. Brooks scored well with her first wave with a 4.33 — the second best ride of the heat — but could not add enough to it to escape third.
In the elimination round, Brooks posted an early 3.83 score and sat in second spot behind Fitzgibbons' 4.90 total. Brooks then recorded a 2.23 with some eight minutes left to improve her score and move into first place at 6.06.
All three surfers scored with waves in the last minute with Sakura Johnson climbing into first place at 10.10, ahead of Brooks (7.73) and Fitzgbbons (5.90).
While Brooks' family has a home a 10-minute drive away from the site of the competition, Brooks notes the testing Banzai Pipeline is always changing.
After Hawaii, the elite Championship Tour shifts to Abu Dhabi, Portugal, El Salvador, Australia (for three straight events), the U.S., Brazil, South Africa and Tahiti before closing with the WSL Finals in Fiji from Aug. 27 to Sept. 4.
The campaign opens with 18 competitors on the women's side — the top 10 finishers from the 2024 Championship Tour, the top five from the 2024 Challenger Series, two WSL season wild cards and one event wild card. The field will be cut to 12 after seven events and then five for the season-ending WSL Finals.
The 36-competitor men's field will be reduced to 24 at the midseason cut and then five ahead of Fiji.
The winning prize money ranges from US$80,000 in the season opener to $100,000 after the midseason cut and $200,000 for the WSL Finals.
Brooks started surfing at nine when her family moved to Hawaii from Texas. She has Canadian ties through her American-born father Jeff, who is a dual American-Canadian citizen, and her grandfather who was born and raised in Montreal.
Brooks gained her Canadian citizenship last year after a lengthy legal battle that limited her Olympic qualifying opportunities to the ISA World Surfing Games in March in Puerto Rico. Brooks fell short and had to watch the Olympic surfing competition in Tahiti from afar.
Brooks, then 16, scored a perfect 10 en route to winning the Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro last May and finished runner-up at the GWM Sydney Surf Pro later that month in Australia events on the Challenger Series.
Brooks will be travelling on tour with her parents and coach Jake Patterson, an 11-year veteran of the WSL tour who won the 1998 Pipeline Masters.
Brooks, whose family also has a home in Tofino, B.C., spent the off-season training with a regimen that included agility training on a trampoline.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 5, 2025.
The Canadian Press