Stats

Further to my last post, I've just seen some interesting stats which have prompted me to follow it up. When I wrote that last post I was going to look at previous years' results to see what the lowdown was on surfers who win the first two events going on to win the title, but I had too much else to do and, frankly, I guess I was being a bit lazy. Well luckily the ASP have done if for me here. But I'll happily regurgitate those statistics here and try to avoid plagiarism allegations as I go...

Unsurprisingly, if you win the first two events of the tour you are fairly likely to get the title - it really is as simple as that. So Joel Parkinson is currently in pretty good company - you may have heard of Mark Richards, Tom Carroll, Tom Curren, Kelly Slater and Sunny Garcia - apparently they were ok surfers way back when... Well they all won the first two events in various years and all of them went on to win the tour in those years. In fact, Kelly managed this three times and Curren did it twice.

You may not have heard of Cheyne Horan and Hans Hedemann (ok, Cheyne Horan is on the radar but without being rude who the heck is Hans Hedemann? I'm envisaging some teutonic blonde dude surfing in leiderhosen). They both have the dubious accolade of winning the first two but not sealing the deal at the end of the season. In fact neither of them ever lifted the title. Somehow I can't see Parko's name joining Horan and Hedemann in surfing's Hall of Moderate Success but Relative Obscurity, but who knows...

The ASP article reminded me that only one surfer has ever won three events in a row - Tom Curren in 1990. So if Parko pulls off a win in Tahiti next month, he really will be in good company, and he will be ahead of Slater in at least one surfing statistic, which is no mean feat...