[imagesource: YouTube / O’Neill]

When our beaches were shut down due to COVID-19, it was a bit of a bummer.

It wasn’t long before we saw footage of people being tossed in police vans, or beachgoers fleeing as officers approached.

For South Africa’s surfing community, it was a real bummer.

Just ask Jordy Smith, who returned home to spend the winter in South Africa for the first time in 14 years.

His story is being detailed as part of an O’Neill series called Silver Linings, covering the incredible highs and devastating lows Jordy has experienced in his life recently.

These include entering fatherhood, surfing incredible waves, and suffering a near career-ending injury that forced him to drop out of the Tokyo Olympics.

In episode three, he returns to one of his favourite haunts:

Jeffreys Bay is a special place that Jordy has always kept close, as it is the wave that helped develop his effortless power surfing and wise knack for reading one of the best and fastest waves on earth.

In Episode 3, Jordy heads to J-Bay just in time for a series of swells at his beloved South African point break.  As expected, Jordy puts his patented power and flow on display at pumping J-Bay.

He really does tear it up:

The man knows how to dominate those waves and Surfline concurs:

Plenty of surfers have achieved perfection at Jeffreys Bay throughout the ages — Shaun, Terry, Curren, Occy, Kelly, Andy, Mick — and who can forget Filipe recalibrating the perfect 10 there?

But no one has consistently surfed J-Bay harder, faster, smoother and more radically than South Africa’s own Jordy Smith, even if they have won more contests there.

After watching this clip, we don’t know which is the bigger tragedy: the loss of J-Bay on the World Tour; or the fact that Jordy’s never won a World Title. Neither makes any sense.

Perhaps there is still time for the latter to happen.

Jordy’s only 33.

[source:surfline]