It was as if he wanted to avoid the attention of media that had elevated his status into a new strathosphere of surf celebrity.

IS KELLY POINTING BOARD DESIGN TOWARDS THE FUTURE? ONLY TIME WILL TELL. SPARKESPHOTO.COM

But this year his practice sessions took place in the middle of the day. Kelly wasn’t hiding from anything, on the contrary it seemed the magician had something he wanted to show off; something that would invariably mess with the minds of the competitor’s watching and, in so doing, enhance his campaign for a tenth world title. And if they weren’t witnessing it they’d sure hear about it before they paddled out in their first round heat. So what was the weapon Kelly unveiled even before the event started? Well, the more mythical name for it was the Wizard’s Sleeve, but in more technical terms it was a 5’3” or 5’4” rounded-pin, quad that Kelly had made himself. Actually it would be a half truth to say Kelly had only one tricky sleeve. It seemed he’d been a busy boy in the shaping bay during the off-season and had made himself [and a few of his mates – including Dorian, Pottz and TC] a bunch of little mind-benders. So busy in fact that maybe he hadn’t had time to test-drive all his new creations. To make things a little more efficient he’d paddle out at Snapper for a freesurf, using Quiksilver international team manager Steven Bell as a caddie. Midway through a session Kelly would paddle up to Belly and swap boards. The surfing prior to the event ranged from revolutionary to hit and miss depending on how you saw it. “He’s up there with being the fastest surfer in the water right now,” suggested former top 45 surfer, Toby Martin. “I’m loving it.” WQS contender Luke Cheadle wasn’t so readily impressed. It works well at small Snapper but when I saw him riding it in solid, steeper, D-Bah the turns looked a little flat and not on rail.”

By the time the official press conference for the event was hosted on the 26th of Feb, Kelly’s board was already a major talking point. Even the local mainstream press had picked up on it and the Gold Coast Bulletin went so far as to suggest it was the biggest design shake up in surfing since the unveiling of Simon Anderson’s thruster. The Bulletin’s Luke Turgeon wasn’t fussed by the awe surrounding Kelly and grilled him on his new self sufficient approach to surfing. “I think Al [referring to Al Merrick of Channel Islands] is just getting tired of doing all the work and wants me to do some,” quipped Kelly when quizzed about why he was shaping. When pressed further Kelly suggested that the board “felt faster in a straight line, turned more sharply and projected quicker.” But a hyped press conference and a couple of ambiguous free surfs weren’t going to be enough to convince the surfing public that Kelly had once again pulled off a major reinvention of his act. Ultimate validation could only come in the form competitive success.

In round one Kelly drew Danny Wills and Dayyan Neve. The turn pictured pretty much summed up what Kelly was capable of on the Wizard’s Sleeve. Kelly has thrown all his weight behind the turn but managed to retain control. Almost the entire small board is out of the water but this is no aerial attempt, it’s a fully committed carve. The quad set up has enabled him to hold the heavy turn instead of blowing out because there’s two fins on the rail absorbing the load instead of one. Kelly dominated the heat and was understandably wrapped when I spoke to him afterwards. “It’s the first time I’ve ridden a board I made, in a contest.” Did he think others would start shaving inches off their own designs if he had continued success? Apparently not. “Well I started riding different boards last year and no-one has really followed me on that.” Kelly may be on the money. Most top surfers, when questioned about Kelly’s design, were adamant that they believed he was probably the only one that could ride them. “Not a chance,” chuckled Taj Burrow when I asked him [after a comfortable round one win on his firewire] if he’d be game to ride something like Kelly’s 5’4”. “I don’t think he surfs as well on them on anyway,” he probed, perhaps hopeful that he could swing the psyche game back in his own favour. And certainly not everyone was content to fall under the spell of the Wizard’s Sleeve. “Is that what he’s riding, that’s getting a bit cocky isn’t it,” stated Dean Morrison [who hadn’t been caught up in the hype] when I told him about Kelly’s virtuoso efforts on his own board. Cheyne Horan was more concerned. Kelly had sighted Cheyne as an inspiration for much of his design innovation and Cheyne felt in some part unwillingly responsible for Kelly’s radical board choice. “I told him it was a mistake and that if he was on a wining formula before, he should stick to it.”

KELLY TESTING THE LIMITS OF HIS WIZARD’S SLEEVE. SMITHY

Simon Anderson shaped the 6’1” dubbed ‘brown beauty’, that was instrumental in Kelly’s seventh and eighth World Title victories. He’s qualified in every way to totally dismiss the Wizard’s Sleeve as indulgent folly. But even though he had just watched Kelly lose to Julian Wilson in round three, [a loss many people attributed to the board] Simon was anything but negative. “I reckon he’s surfing great on it,” stated Simon, “and I can’t wait to see him riding it at eight foot Bells.” But perhaps the final word goes to Timmy Reyes, one of the few other surfers who also has a 5’3” in his quiver he is willing to ride in contests. “Those boards of Kelly’s are all my boards.” Timmy wasn’t talking literally but he was however suggesting that Kelly had borrowed a lot of his ideas. “I was riding really small boards in Hawaii a couple of years ago. I caught Kelly eyeing one off in my yard one day. I’m pretty sure he took one out when I wasn’t looking. Then two years later at Pipe there he was riding something really small at Pipe. [Kelly rode a version of the Wizard’s Sleeve in the Pipe final he won at the end of last year].