For a break known for it's almost dry reef drops and huge barrels, the 3rd stop on the ASP World Tour, Teahupoo saw small 4ft (1.5 meters for our foreign readers) but clean sets the last day of the comptetition. The final came down to Santa Barbara born Bobby Martinez vs. Australian charger Taj Burrow. Bobby moved into the finals after beating Aritz Aranburu of the Basque country in the 2nd semi, while Taj moved in by taking out fellow Australian Michael Campbell in the first semi.

Conditions were less than ideal for a world class break like Teahupoo, but still enough for Bobby to get barreled and edge out a win with a final score 18.46 to Taj's 16.10.

It's Bobby's second win at the world calss break, but his first Elite tour win since 2007 in Mundaka.

The irony of the whole event is the huge display betrayal and subsequent video created by Da Hui, who ripped Billabong for not allowing more locals to take the wildcard slots in their own backyard (www.theextremescene.com/blog/wildcard-spots-a-minimum). With the event window coming to a close the event was called in conditions that would have put the would be wildcard locals on a level playing field with the more well rounded top 45 surfers in the world.  Basically, unless Teahupoo is pumping, the locals have little to no edge.  Now that's not to say that what Billabong did, choosing one of their own sponsored surfers over some of the ripper locals wasn't a little F'ed up, but then again Andy Irons is a 3 time world champ.

Maybe it was karma that killed the swell and lowered the spectator interest in the Billabong event this year, but then again if you ask Bobby, I'm sure he would say the Karma was just fine.