When it comes to balls-ups they don't come much bigger than the Kelly Slater fiasco. I can't think of a precedent in professional sport - certainly not by the sports that surfing is competing against for dollars and airtime.

For those who arent aware of what happened today, here's a quick recap...

During the buildup of the Rip Curl Search San Francisco the ASP announced that Kelly Slater, who was leading the ratings, would only have to win his Round 3 heat to wear the crown. He did so by disposing of Dan Ross and was promptly chaired up the beach to much fanfare and celebration. He hugged friends, gave speeches, and drank champagne from the cup. He spoke of Andy. It was all caught on film and news outlets around the world ran with surfing's world title-winning story.

Yet today the news is that he hasn't actually won it yet – he's still a few points short. How the mistake was discovered and reported is almost as fascinating as the fact it happened at all.

It started with an innocuous comment from a fellow named Mark on Surfline. Congratulating Slater on the win he then enquired why he won if the possibility still existed of Owen Wright scoring the same amount of points at years end. That would be the scenario if Wright wins this comp and the next and Slater places 9th here and no higher than 13th at Pipe.

From there it went to Twitter where Kelly said to his followers, "Can you read this comment from Mark? The calculator at @aspworldtour must be broken. I'm not the world champ yet". He joked about the situation a few times before adding, " @aspworldtour isn't gonna be happy with me or this but realized last night and confirmed just now with them."

That Kelly owned up to the mistake is worth pointing out – he could very well have let the comment slide. That he did it publicly, with, it would be assumed, full knowledge of the ensuing public relations nightmare, is of greater relevancy. It was only three years ago that Slater threatened the legitimacy of the ASP with his proposed Rebel Tour.

The ASP replied on Twitter, first with the somewhat cryptic reply, "@kellyslater we have plenty of things to be unhappy about. Honesty is not one of them," and then a press release accepting fault and announcing that Slater hadn't won his 11th world title just yet.

As the news spread across Twitter the one-liners ran hot ("Kelly's from Florida. I remember an election having counting issues there." - Jamie O'Brien), as did deeper criticisms referring to ineptitude and hypocrisy by the ASP ("This keeps getting better and better. ASP pulls this blunder while they fine surfers for criticizing them in the media." - Mark Healey). Even Bobby Martinez awoke from his slumber in all his upper case glory ("ASP DONT EVEN NO HOW TO WORK THERE OWN NEW TENNIS SYSTEM! HAHA IDIOTS LEAVE TENNIS SYSTEM TO THE TENNIS PLAYERS! HAHA").

The mistake comes at a particularly bad time for the ASP, having just batted away criticisms about choice of tour venues, the One World ranking system, and a judging fiasco in Brazil. They'd had great surf at Teahupoo and unexpectedly good at New York, plus there was a noticeable jump in performance levels. The error, which in all likelihood will not change the title outcome, threatens to undo the accumulated goodwill. It's gonna take a lot of good surf and slob airs for people to forget what happened today.

Jessi Miley-Dyer is the women's representative on the ASP board. This afternoon she posted this message on Facebook: "Heading to California for last ASP Board Meeting for 2011. After today, and reading everyone's Facebook comments, I can imagine that it is going to be interesting."

From celebration to damage control, it's gonna be a very 'interesting' meeting indeed.