Op Pro Drops Team Format for ’93 Championships

Officials have dropped the team format for the Op Pro surfing championships in favor of individual championships for the 1993 contest, which is scheduled June 26-July 3 at the Huntington Beach Pier.

The 12th Op Pro will be either a four- or five-star qualifying event for the Assn. of Surfing Professionals world tour and will offer at least a $75,000 purse, said Judy Horton, Op marketing and event coordinator.

Horton expects the qualifying format to draw 90% of the top pros, many of whom skipped last year’s team competition after it replaced the individual format the contest used the previous 10 years.

“We will probably have a tag-team competition along with the (individual contest),” Horton said. “The details still are not firmed up yet because we need to talk to the ASP (officials) again. I expect it to come in the next couple of weeks.”

The Huntington Beach City Council approved the Op Pro schedule Monday night. The championships are scheduled during a break in the world tour schedule, one of the few opportunities for the top pros to compete in the United States.

If the Op Pro hadn’t been granted the requested dates, the championships would have been reduced to a team competition, said Ron Hagan, community services director in Huntington Beach. Op has agreed to reimburse the city for its costs next year, Hagan said.

The Op Pro had been a part of the ASP championship tour for 10 years, but switched to an international team format last summer after falling $40,000 shy of the $125,000 purse required for an ASP individual championship event. The change came at a difficult time for Op, which began reorganizing in May after filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.

The format switch proved unpopular with surfers and the fans. Former Op champions Tom Curren, Frieda Zamba and Barton Lynch bypassed the event, as did other top pros such as Tom Carroll, Brad Gerlach, Derek Ho, Cheyne Horan, Martin Potter and Damien Hardman. Team USA, led by world champion Kelly Slater, defeated Team Australia for the title.

An estimated crowd of 25,000 watched the finals, about half the typical attendance of previous years. Op officials had blamed the attendance decline on delays in finishing the new pier and because two earthquakes hit on the final day of competition June 28.

Such top pros as Jeff Booth of Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel’s Pat O’Connell and Newport Beach’s Richie Collins criticized the team format because it offered no world tour points. The format switch also left the mainland United States without a world-tour contest.

“Last year’s contest was a very successful event,” Horton said, “but we realize it’s important that surfers can gain some points from it. We batted this (topic) back and forth.

“The media had some bad things to say about the (team) format. But we didn’t get any bad vibes from the competitors.”

Op officials originally requested that the finals be held on July 4. But city officials rejected the bid, fearing that huge turnouts for the surfing championship and the Fourth of July Parade and fireworks show would be too much for the city to handle.

Times correspondent Robert Barker contributed to this story.