Surfer Carissa Kainani Moore headlines opening today of Maui Women’s Pro

After a year’s hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, the globe-trotting World Surf League championship tour is rebooting today with its kickoff event, the Roxy Maui Pro at Honolua Bay, headlined by Hawaii’s Carissa Kainani Moore, the defending world champ and four-time world title winner.

The holding period for the event, which runs from today through Dec. 15, opens on the heels of pumping surf in the first big north swell to hit the islands this winter, which gave the assembled contestants from around the world some welcome practice time on Maui’s north shore at the right-hand point break fabled for its speed, power, roomy tubes and clean lines.

“It’s another beautiful day in a nice run of days, with still some leftover swell from a solid 8 feet yesterday,” said Moore, 28, who has won the Honolua event three times, speaking by phone Thursday from Maui. “I’m very stoked we had some waves to warm up on.”

Today marks the first time the championship tour is opening in the islands, where it formerly concluded with the women’s Maui Pro and the men’s Billabong Pipe Masters by Hydro Flask, now set to kick off the men’s season Tuesday at Banzai Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore.

“I love this wave,” Moore said of Honolua. “I’m so happy to be here to start off at home.”

At the same time, she said she felt for the competitors who had to travel long distances, away from their loved ones, to get to Maui, where for the first time, due to the pandemic, a WSL championship event is being held without a live audience at the scene.

According to the organization’s website, the WSL has been collaborating with state and county leaders in Hawaii and following the recommendations of public health and medical experts, which allowed the competition to move forward as a nonspectator film production with coronavirus protocols in place.

In December 2019, three months before coronavirus lockdowns were ordered in Hawaii and elsewhere in the U.S. and the world, Moore announced she would be taking a leave of absence from the championship tour in order, she said at the time, to prepare for competing on the four-member U.S. team in the first-ever Olympic surf competition, then scheduled for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, work on her @moorealoha nonprofit and a film, “go on some fun surf trips and do things I haven’t had the chance to.”

In March she won the Women’s Sydney Surf Pro in Australia, the debut event in a new WSL Challenger Series that proved to be the last WSL contest before the shutdown; soon afterward the Tokyo Olympics were postponed.

“It wasn’t the year we’d expected to have, but I had so much fun being at home, hanging out with family, my husband, the dogs, (and) I picked up tennis,” Moore said.

She kept in touch with a few other surfers, “and I think it was interesting — we were all going through very similar things mentally, and it was a break we all needed.”

And now, she said, “it’s very nice to see everyone again” on Maui.

In addition to seven-time world champ Stephanie Gilmore, 32, and two-time world champ Tyler Wright, 26, both Australians who have won at Honolua Bay, this year’s stellar lineup includes Californians and two-time world title runners-up Lakey Peterson, 26, and Courtney Conlogue, 28; and Hawaii natives Malia Manuel, 27, a championship tour veteran and Honolua ace, and wild-card entrant Bettylou Sakura Johnson, 15, who won the Papara Pro Open Tahiti, a WSL qualifying event, in early March. Johnson will compete against Moore and Australian Bronte Macaulay in Heat 3 of the Maui Pro.

Another youngster who, like Moore, is a performer whose powerful, rhythmic style and sunny personality make her a favorite among tour surfers and spectators, is Florida-born Caroline Marks, 18, current world runner-up, who along with Moore won a place as one of the two women on the U.S. Olympic surf team. The two male Olympians, both 28, are Hawaii’s John John Florence, a two-time world champ, and California’s Kolohe Andino.

Marks, speaking by phone from Maui, said she was more than ready to compete, especially after surfing this week’s big swell.

“I surfed till I was cross-eyed,” said the 2018 Rookie of the Year, who at 16 broke Moore’s record as the youngest-ever qualifier for the women’s championship tour. “Definitely, being home was awesome, but I’m a little bit of a gypsy (and was) kind of going crazy at the end.”

Assessing the Maui Pro competition, “Carissa, Courtney, Stephanie are the favorites, but there’s definitely no easy heats — all the girls are super gnarly and super prepared due to such a long offseason,” Marks said.

She now lives in San Cle­mente, Calif., where, luckily for her, she said, her home break is Lower Trestles, which will be the site of the championship final event this year.

“Honolua breaks over a reef and has a little more power and it can barrel, but Trestles is quite a bit more playful, like a liquid skate park,” Marks said.

With potential for “aerial maneuvers, really high- performance surfing, it’s the best place to finish the season, really fair, with both lefts and rights,” said the young goofy-foot, the term for surfers who stand with their right foot forward and their face to left-breaking waves.

In yet another first for this season, the WSL women’s and men’s final events will determine the world champions. Formerly awarded to the surfer who scores the highest number of points during the tour, the world title will be awarded to the winner at Trestles, picked by the judges from a field of the season’s highest-ranking surfers.

Asked what she thought of that format, “You know, it’s gonna be interesting,” Moore said, noting that “there’ll obviously be a lot of pressure in that last event,” and she hoped she’d get there.

But right now Moore was focused on the first event and the new, big north swell that’s predicted to arrive Sunday night with the potential for exciting rides at Honolua Bay. “Thanks to WSL for getting us here and to all the fans for watching at home,” she said.

The Maui Pro will be broadcast live on WorldSurfLeague.com and the free WSL app, and carried locally by the Spectrum Surf Channel.

The second WSL championship tour event for women and men, the Sunset Open, also will be held in Hawaii, at Oahu’s Sunset Beach on Jan. 19-28.