In his later years, a koa board still in tow, Duke Kahanamoku preached and promoted the sport of surfing on both coasts of the U. S. mainland and to shores beyond.

But even for someone so worldly in outlook and decades ahead of his time in envisioning a worldwide place for the sport, you wonder what he would make of what will take place amid 20 dusty, landlocked acres of central California farmland in the coming months.

In the small agriculture and military community of Lemoore, Calif., (population approximately 27,000) surrounded by almond groves, alfalfa fields and cotton rows 110 miles from the Pacific Ocean, professional surfers will compete for championships in a tradition-rattling state-of-the-art artificial wave pool.

Built on a former waterski pond, now known by the once incongruent title of “Surf Ranch” and serving up eight-foot glassy barrels, it will take its place in the World Surf League tour lineup with Hawaii, Tahiti, Australia and Brazil.

This week the WSL announced a Founders’ Cup of Surfing team event at the Surf Ranch for May 5-6 on the heels of two other championship tour events at the venue — one each on the women’s and men’s tours (Sept. 5-9) — on its previously released 2018 schedule.

All of it assembled from the vision of 11-time world champion Kelly Slater, the expertise of a USC professor specializing in fluid dynamics, and acquired in 2016 by WSL Holdings, Inc., of Santa Monica, Calif., well ahead of the current North Shore permitting controversy.

“What the team has created is hard to fathom at first — a perfect, 400-yard-long, bi-directional wave in the middle of rural California,” said Adrian Buchan, a WSL championship tour competitor in a WSL news release.

But what the 2,300-foot by 492-foot facility means isn’t hard to fathom. Based on last fall’s trial run, the expectation is that the events will be prototypes for spreading the sport to major inland areas (Las Vegas, Paris, Beijing anyone?) once deemed inaccessible.

It is apparently too late for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which will be held on a Chiba beach, but if surfing remains an Olympic sport in 2024, expect to see a version of Le Surf Ranch in Paris.

“It’s really advantageous in terms of scheduling competition — for surfers, fans, broadcasters, partners, etc.,” said Dave Prodan, WSL senior vice president of global brand identity, in an email. “Combined with the power, unpredictability and raw beauty of our ocean-based event and content, the WSL has the potential to introduce surfing, the sport and the culture, to an even wider audience. The technology has the ability to deliver world-class waves, and world-class surfing, to any location on the planet so non-traditional sites have the opportunity to experience our sport and culture more intimately.”

It is a revolution that comes with significant tradeoffs. On one hand waves can be turned out uniformly and conveniently on schedule with holding periods unnecessary. Competitors can be assigned an 11:37 a.m. slot and be assured a wave of mandated proportions will be there. But the ocean’s quirks can’t be reproduced. The ability to read the ocean or deal with its unpredictability will no longer be tested or rewarded.

“The ocean will always be our home, but as we grow, having the opportunity to showcase and share the stoke of surfing to new audiences and schedule with pinpoint accuracy the huge match-ups and drama of the WSL is really exciting,” Buchan said.

“The implementation of man-made wave events offers a lot of exciting opportunities for surfing,” Prodan said. “That said, these opportunities are additive to what we already have, not replacing the high value we place on our ocean events.”

A sign of the coming times, apparently, that it will be necessary to invoke the label “ocean events” to refer to surfing?

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.