The WSL Finals Day Experiment Is Over – Let’s Recap

The Finals format was the former WSL’s CEO Erik Logan’s baby, and as of last Tuesday, that baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. After five years, perhaps the biggest experiment and disruption in professional surfing is now over.  But what is the legacy of the format that crowned 10 World Champs, and introduced a Super Bowl, or Grand Final, element to surfing? A minor postscript. A scar on the sport, or a development far ahead if its time? We examine the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good

Turns Out It Wasn’t A Crapshoot

“It’s so crazy that the whole year is decided like that in one heat,” said Yago Dora after winning in Fiji. The biggest criticism of the Finals was that the best surfer all year (in 2021 for example, Medina had won the rankings by more than 13,000 points) could lose it all in a crap shoot in two heats. In the Men’s, at least, this didn’t play out. Every year, the World Champ was also the World No. 1 at the end of the rankings. Advocates, if you can find them, will argue it provided the best of both worlds. A worthy winner, and a dramatic climax. The Women’s, though, told a different story.

It Added Tension

Growing up on Aussie Rules and Rugby League in Australia, the Grand Final (aka the Grandy) was the biggest day in the sporting calendar. The Super Bowl also distills a whole season into three hours, and the odd wardrobe malfunction. So the attraction of concertining a long, broken-up year into a single day of surfing tension is a powerful one. After all, many a World Title was previously clinched when someone else lost, in Round 2, on an empty European or Brazilian beach. It’s hard to build a narrative around that.  

Steph’s record-breaking 8th World Title was truly historic, and wouldn’t have happened without the Finals. You’d have to have a callous heart not to feel the emotion of Filipe Toledo’s first World Title win in 2023. And Caity Simmer’s performance at 2024 was elevated to iconic as there was a World Title on the line. This year, first World Title wins by Yago and Molly felt like a new wind of change. We may miss that one-day dramatic finish.

Related: Molly Picklum, Yago Dora Win First World Titles in Historic Cloudbreak Surf

The Bad

The Women’s Was A Crapshoot

The Women had less correlation between the year’s dominant surfer and the World Title. Steph Gilmore came from fifth to win, while Caroline Marks had finished third on the rankings, but won at Trestles. In both instances, Carissa Moore was the biggest victim of the format. She would later say she felt robbed of two world titles. Fans argue it also played a big part in her retirement. Even Steph agreed. “This year belongs to Carissa Moore. She’s the real world champ!” she said on the podium. A statement somewhat undermined by the fact that she was holding the World Title Trophy at the time.

“To be the undisputed, undeniable Champ is something I’ve dreamt of, and to win that way feels my heart,” said Molly Picklum in Fiji. Yet the Finals format, like the Death Star’s exhaust port in Star Wars, had a fatal flaw hard-wired into its inner machinery. The winner could always be disputed. It was this flaw that helped kill it.

Right Format? Wrong Location aka The Toledo Effect

The WSL Finals started off with an arm tied behind its back due to its home base of Trestles. Sure, it is one of the world’s elite high-performance waves, but it offered no real test of a surfer’s all-around ability. Let’s call it the Toledo effect, where World Titles were decided in a wave that heavily weighted small wave, progressive surfing. Looking back, the WSL were slightly blessed that Trestles scored solid forecasts each year. The move to Fiji, the wave with perhaps the best combination of tubes and turns on the planet, was a sound one. But, even a one-day event, with a 10-day window, can succumb to the Gods of the ocean. They (just about) got away with this one, but eventually,  a Finals day would have been held in substandard conditions.  

The Ugly

It Fucked The Calendar

When Molly and Yago claimed their World Titles on September 2nd, 2025, they could afford to blow off a little steam. They now won’t don a singlet in a CT event until Bells, which kicks off in April 1st, 2026. No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke; surfing’s off-season is now 7 months long. That’s longer than the NHL, which is played on ice for chrissakes. Whether it was the scheduling issues that drove the Finals format, or the Finals that drove the calendar, is largely irrelevant. It has deprived surf fans of elite surfing competition for more than half the year, which is pure madness.

At The End Of The Day, It Wasn’t Pipe

The last time there was a World Title Pipeline decider was 2018. That’s a long eight years away from the sport’s spiritual home and end zone. The WSL Finals may have had long-term viability if it had been held at Banzai. The irony was that the new format was introduced because the old system didn’t guarantee a Pipe finish. Fans, however, didn’t mind that opportunity cost, because when it did, it often delivered some of the sport’s most dramatic, emotional, and clutch moments. In 2026, the extra 50% weighting for the Pipe event is a pretty neat solution to all these problems. There will be a much higher chance that a World Title will be decided at Pipe, yet with nine of 12 results still counting. If that does happen, the WSL Finals will be a five-year aberration that may never see the light of day again.

It won’t be missed.