Sometimes average is good enough.

Keoni Yan grabbed a middling wave with about two minutes left, did a few turns and scored a 3.5 out of 10. Normally, a 3.5 isn’t going to do too much, but it was enough to vault him past Myles Padaca for a victory in Sunday’s Sunset Pro surf contest at Sunset Beach.

Yan was trailing 8.50 to 6.00 to Padaca in the four-man final when he caught the mediocre offering. But, there was no choice. Time was running out. Now or never.

“Right before that, I went on two waves just trying to get what I needed (a 2.6), but I was too deep and didn’t make it,” said the 20-year-old Yan, who was born in Honolulu, moved to Tahiti at a young age and relocated back to Oahu’s North Shore after graduating from high school. “Those two waves put me in position to catch the (winning wave) on the shoulder.”

Early in the heat, Yan was sitting deeper and nabbed what turned out to be a 6.00 ride, and for most of the rest of the way, that was the highest scoring wave of the 30-minute final.

In the middle of the final, there was a long lull. Previously, Padaca took his lead with rides of 3.50 and 5.00, and it appeared he might go home a winner. With about a minute to go, right after Yan took the lead, Kauai’s Evan Valiere caught the biggest wave of the set, a 4-footer, and managed a 6.75. It wasn’t enough.

“I heard that was the best score of the heat,” Valiere said afterward, and he was correct. “I was waiting for the best waves to roll in. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken some of the smaller waves.”

Padaca took the opposite approach, picking off whatever he could to build up his score and throw away the lower scores.

“My strategy was to get a bunch of waves,” said Padaca, who is originally from the Big Island but has lived on the Oahu’s North Shore for 25 years. “But then the wind came in and the conditions and the waves deteriorated. It was a no-wave final most of the way.”

Padaca took second place and $1,500, with Valiere in third ($1,100) and Maui’s Tanner Hendrickson in fourth ($900).

Yan was pumped up about the win, the $2,500 first-place check and the 1,000 points toward his standing in the World Surf League’s qualifying series. One of his goals is to make it into the Top 100, so he can surf in qualifying series prime events that carry more points and give him more of a chance to qualify for the big leagues in 2017 — the World Surf League’s championship tour.

“This is my first WSL final and my first WSL win,” he said. “I had made a couple of semifinals before. It feels so good, considering how many top (Hawaii surfers) were out there.”