Of course he deserved it! To beat the champ, you gotta knock that motherf—ker out, not do safety turns and expect the judges to do the rest! Get real haole.

The only real argument is whether or not you can post an 18+ heat score without getting two set waves.  I guess you can.  If you're Kelly.

The only reason why we're even talking about this is because it was the final (I'm sure we could talk about other questionable calls within the whole contest), and because Kelly's on the biggest roll in competitive surfing history.  Everybody's got a little part of them that wants to see the champ get taken out.  The whole thing makes for a good old controversial blah war.

I wanna hear more about the whole 40 min. final instead of 35 min. thing.  Who the hell agrees to giving Kelly even more time to find a 10????

Shortly before the final was due to go out Kelly convinced contest director Mike Parson to extend it by five minutes because of the inconsistency, and from what i understand Taj agreed.

Yeah, there were other questionable calls, no doubt. I will say though, that the judges do a great job, scoring 99% of waves with incredible accuracy in real time. (I know they have instant replay available, but i don't think they use it that much).

I do think they overscored Kelly's last wave, here's why: It wasn't a set wave and he got off two reasonably big manuvers on the outside, but nothing spectacular after that and he got a 9.27. So, what? Well, now imagine if he'd somehow paddled right back out, snagged a big set wave and did a huge air reverse, smashed five more tail blasts down the beach, and finished it off with a monster end gouge. By the previous wave's scoring precedent, they'd have to give him a 12. They didn't leave enough room for a bigger, more radical wave score.

I like the idea of the judges giving bigger scores based on guys taking chances and doing more high-risk manuvers like big tail blow outs and airs, it makes it more exciting, and it'll keep guys like Dane, Jordy, and Josh Kerr (who's looking like he's gonna re-qualify for the 2009 WCT, by the way) more amped on doing the tour, which is a good thing.

As for Slater's last wave though, with the exception of the 360, he surfed that wave as perfectly as humanly possible (no check turns, no hesitation, full control on a couple of radical manuvers), but i reckon the only way a non-set wave should get in that scoring range is if he did a rodeo or something super crazy on it.

that's because he won