Hawaii’s Sunny Garcia owned the final from the start at the HIC Pro on Saturday.

Garcia’s first wave at Sunset Beach featured three huge, patented power snaps good for an 8.5 (out of 10). He quickly followed that up with a 6.33 and left the rest of the field playing catch-up.

After Garcia’s first two waves, the ocean went slow. Granger Larsen, Gregg Nakamura and Fred Patacchia (who finished second to fourth) all put up valiant efforts, but it was Garcia’s day to shine.

Garcia first won the event 20 years ago, and could not believe he had done it again at age 42.

"I feel good. I am happy," he said. "To be able to compete with some of these young kids who have been ripping so hard, I am just happy to do good. If you would have asked me 20 years ago if I would still be doing events 20 years later, I would have told you no, for sure.

"I got my two best waves right at the beginning of the heat, so I got lucky. After that, there wasn’t too many waves in the final, so I got lucky again."

With the win, Garcia, a six-time Triple Crown of Surfing champion, earned a seed into the round of 64 as a wild card in the Reef Hawaiian Pro at Haleiwa and the Vans World Cup of Surfing at Sunset, the first two events of the Triple Crown. If he is in contention for the Triple Crown at the end of the two, he can be granted entry into the Billabong Pipeline Masters.

Larsen, from Maui, executed some precise and powerful surfing to make his second final at Sunset Beach.

For Nakamura, who works a desk job as a civil engineer and only competes when he can get time off, it was the first WQS final of his life. After coming off the podium, he signed his first autograph for a fan.

"I usually only sign papers at work, so it was a little harder on a T-shirt," he said.