With the world tour event at J-Bay on in less than a couple weeks now we caught up with two of South Africa’s best, big wave world tour champion Grant Twiggy Baker (on his way to Peru) and local Jeffreys Bay standout Warren Dean to find out their predictions for this year’s event.

Due to appear in another epic Clash of the Legends heat against Occy this year, we also figured we could do worse than ask all time great Tom Curren for his hot picks too.

Tom Curren

An on form Michel with his Firewires could really do some damage… they’re the type of boards that go great in coldwater and at J-Bay…

“As always, it will really depend on the conditions the event scores. A lack of swell at Fiji really shook up the outcome and it’ll be the same for J-Bay. If it’s smaller conditions then backsiders will find it much harder. That said, if it’s cooking, Jordy Smith will be hard to beat, no real surprise to anyone. I could see Michel Bourez do well again, his quiver of Firewires are really well suited there especially in cold water which tends to stiffen their flex and hone the Tahitian’s power surfing.”