My comments on the new asp format.

This year surfing revolutionized it's scoring format by moving from judging on critical to degree of difficulty. How this transfered over into a judges criteria is rewarding aireal and innovative surfing over traditional carving surfing. I believe that this liberation has some pros and cons. Well the obvious pro was that watching surf contests are extremely exciting now as surfers feel if they go for their biggest manuevers they will be rewarded. It's been quite visually stimulating watching Dane Reynolds, Evan Gielseman, and Kolohe Andino who in my oppinion have made the transition the best. Yet it's kind of a bummer when you have amazing surfers like C.J Hobgood or Freddy Patachia, who have very technical styles but don't neccessarily have the air antics to get a world championship. Style and rail surfing still needs to be a staple to every score. Especially for surfers on their backhand who don't really have the opportunity to perform innovative manuevers. At Brazil Jadson Andre won basically by doing forehand air reverses every wave mixing in weak rail turns. Definitley believe dane deserved to win that semi final but I'm not a judge and I'm not brazilian.- JAKE