Ron Burgundy once said, “Telling a female to calm down is like trying to baptise a cat.”

We’ve been doing this pro surfing caper for 30-odd-years, and I’ve never seen everyone so nervous. ASP crew have abandoned walking normally and are now doing a kind of urgent Olympic powerwalk everywhere. You know the one, the wildly swinging arms, the not bent at all knees. John Cleese first perfected it. Commentators are fumbling through names, there’s long pauses on air, lots of ums and errs.

To be fair it is a mouthful: The 2014 Samsung Galaxy ASP World Championship Tour.

Saying it five times every half hour doesn’t seem to make it any easier for the commentators either. It's only early days, and we’re not here for the commentary, and we’re definitely not here to learn about the engineering wizardry of the Samsung Galaxy. 

We’re here for the surfing.

There’s plenty of time for everyone to calm down and no cat baptism is necessary just yet. Looking at the long-range swell forecast though, and if there is one for ZoSea, it might be a baptism of fire. Bog standard three-foot with trade winds blowing around the clock as far as the WAMS can see. The cyclone we’re hoping for is suddenly like the midnight train leaving Brisbane station: you know it's gone and you know you’re not getting home.

We’ll be picking the eyes out of the tide and utilising every bit of the window. People will try and attest otherwise, but you can be sure, Snapper is a fickle wave at three-foot. Tide too high, she’s washy and fat and some sections just fold over itself, rather than break. Too low and being propelled by a light onshore, and it's a dredgingly fast closeout that even Dane won’t keep up with as the wave hugs the inside bank down to Little Marley.

This thing will take us to the brink. I just know it. Which is why I wish we knew a little bit more about each surfer’s offseason.

Lewis Samuel’s had a fanciful idea of ranking each surfer before an event. Everyone loves it. Even people at the ASP, who are not renowned for their love, love his rankings. That’s how good they are.

The surfers, however, don’t like them. So what the surfers don’t like, the surfers don’t have to put up with. Apparently. So they’re gone like tumbleweeds in the wind. Samuels’ rankings didn’t even last 24 hours. I’m not even sure anymore where this ranks in the great ASP fiascos of our time. But it's in the top ten.

I keep hearing about fitness.

This offseason is the hardest everyone has been working according to coaches, commentators and the surfers themselves. Melling, Bede and Buchan. They’ve all upped their workload and improved on their strength, endurance and speed this summer. Mello has put more hours into his prep and training this offseason than Beau Emerton, Stuart Bedford Brown and Matt Hoy collectively put into their whole careers. If he doesn’t make the quarters at Snapper, I’ll set my camera filter to Kelvin and take a photo of my arsehole and send it to Paul Speaker for my next media accreditation application.

Nat Young had wisdom teeth removed this summer. He decided that wasn’t enough pain and discomfort for one offseason, so he decided to get his ears drilled a week later. Next offseason he’d need to get buttock implants and a gold grill to beat this one.

All that time out of the water might make him fresh and enthused, but I reckon it’ll make him rusty.

Reigning world champ, Mick, might have had the most low-key offseason I’ve ever seen a world champ have. (Not that’d I’d know what any offseason looks like, let alone a world title winning one). But whenever I saw Fanning he was shirtless, walking his dog and with a fresh board under his arm and sometimes he was not wet or anywhere near the beach! What was he doing?!

Don’t expect him to have the same let down the previous world champ, Parko, had. Joel was jaded before the season even kicked off last year with his World Champ commitments (read Billabong) running him into the ground. No wonder the guy needed to take off mid-event Fiji, and go find himself a mackerel 150 miles away. (See what I did there, ZoSea?)

To the naked eye, there’s not much that’s changed here at the contest site. Sure it's bigger, but it's not otherworldly bigger. To use cows as a comparison, last year’s site was a Hereford, and this year’s site is a Brahman. So we’re a little bit bigger, sure. But we’re not much better. How can it be, after all we’re still just surfing?

We are dependant on an ever-uncooperating ocean. And right now we’ve bought her five drinks and she’s accepted them graciously and hasn’t even as much as lowered her sunglasses and looked at us. A tough nut to crack, but she always will be no matter how many millions ZoSea throws at her.

Which naturally leads us to wavepools...

You can see why Slater trumpets wavepools as the future of competition. And you know what, I’m on board with that. Competitive surfing to me is about as far removed from surfing as what AFL is to Cricket. (ZoSea translation: what NFL is to Baseball.) The sterile environment of pro surfing with all the uptight types powerwalking around like gorgeously tanned expectant fathers, it suits the artificial environment of wave pools like hand in glove.

Contrast this schizophrenic contest scene to a kilometre south, where Neal Purchase Jnr and a few friends were surfing perfect A-frames at a beach all to themselves. No stickers, no outrageous pre-surf stretching routines. Just the purity of wave riding with mates. On top of that I’d bet Purcho was surfing better than a few of the guys in singlets at the ‘expression session’ today.

Enough of my pointless reverie! Back to this year’s Brahman Bull of contest sites.

We’re measuring distances in miles now and some of us are signing waiver forms for everything. Photographers still don’t know what they can and can’t shoot. Unless you’re a media partner, you can’t just turn up and shoot what you like. Confusion reigns.

To be fair to ZoSea, I can actually see why they want to absolve themselves from the stupidity of people and invent a comprehensive Terms & Conditions form for the contest site.

*I just read where some fella in California is suing McDonalds for “undue mental anguish,” due to the fact he was only given one serviette (ZoSea translation: napkin). Apparently he is now unable to work due to his suffering. And all he’s asking for is a quiet$1.5 million US to ease his pain. Only in California, huh?

* Incase you didn’t believe me: http://swllnt.com/1gJra4x