Surf’s Up and so Are Scores as Machado Nails Perfect 10

Somebody check that score again. And grab one of those judges for verification while you’re at it.

There was a perfect 10 at Huntington Beach? Interesting, if not impossible.

Known for decades as Surf City, U.S.A., but never known for its board-splitting waves--an oxymoron, no doubt--Huntington Beach was treated to a perfect ride by Rob Machado on Saturday at the Philips U.S. Open of Surfing.

Compared to the one- and two-footers that broke Friday, the head-high waves were tidal giants, giving surfers hope for scores in the sevens or eights.

But Machado blew past all expectations on his third wave, pulling into a barrel and taking it for a long, surprisingly productive ride.

“It just so happened it all linked up,” he said.

It’s almost blasphemy to denigrate the good name of Huntington Beach, long considered the nation’s surf capital since it hosted the first U.S. tournament in 1959.

Still, surfers have trouble complimenting the two- and three-footers at Huntington, referring to them politely as “contestable” with the knowledge they could catch peaks three times as big at, say, Jeffrey’s Bay in South Arica.

Machado didn’t need a passport to find perfection Saturday.

He also earned the third-highest score of the day, posting an 8.67 on his second wave and advancing to the quarterfinals.

“It’s not Tahiti, it’s not Australia, but we didn’t expect to come here and have great waves,” Machado said. “I consider this to be optimal surfing conditions for Huntington. There’s a lot of peaks.”

Reigning world champion Sunny Garcia took only two waves in his 20-minute heat, the fewest of any surfer, but scored enough points (13.76) to fend off Roy Powers (13.53) and advance to the quarterfinals.

Garcia, the defending U.S. Open champion, doesn’t look at the tournament as a win-at-all-costs event. After all, performance points at the U.S. Open do not count toward the World Championship Tour standings.

“I enjoy coming here and being in the U.S., but I don’t really feel any pressure,” said Garcia, who lives in Hawaii. “For me this is a fun event.”

It was a good tournament for Pauline Menczer, who won the women’s title by studying.

Frustrated with never winning the U.S. Open, Menczer made a point of watching the breaks and patterns 30 minutes before each of her heats. It paid off in the championship--Menczer (19.80) easily outscored Julia Christian (16.00), Prue Jeffries (15.65) and Jodie Nelson (13.05) in a thin field that had only two surfers ranked among the world’s top 15.

“This year I said I was really going to watch the waves,” Menczer said. “There’s so many distractions, but I just wanted to watch the ocean.”

Holly Beck, a top up-and-comer from Palos Verdes, was eliminated in the semifinals on a double-interference call.

Beck, 20, was less than 30 seconds away from a spot in the final but became entangled with Sofia Mulanovich on her last wave. Beck led Mulanovich in scoring and was trying to prevent her from moving ahead by snaring the same wave.

Instead, they each went down and Nelson jumped ahead of them into the final.

“To go down by doing something I had to do was OK,” said Beck, the amateur national champion. “I wasn’t outsurfed out there, I just lost because of strategy. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start my pro career.”