South African Sean Holmes again justified his reputation as the ‘uber-wildcard’ by eliminating current World No. 4 Jadson Andre from Brazil to progress to Round 3 when the Billabong Pro J-Bay got underway in 3-4 ft offshore waves at Supertubes this morning.
In a tightly contested encounter Holmes led from start to finish, counting scores of 6.0 and 7.50 to outpoint the young Brazilian who won the last stop on the ASP World Tour in his home country in May. The victory sets Holmes up for a highly anticipated clash with current World No. 1 and 9 x ASP World Champion Kelly Slater (USA) in the next round.
“Certainly, any heat in this competition can be difficult,” Holmes commented on his heat against Andre. “Even though Jadson hasn’t had a lot of experience here he’s still an excellent surfer. “
“I’ve been looking for the barrel for the past two heats but the conditions haven’t really been conducive to it. Of course I prefer it to be a bit bigger as it suits my surfing better. Conditions permitting, it looks like I may have another heat today so I’ll be focusing on that one before I get too far ahead of myself.”
