Credit: © ASP/ CI/ SCHOLTZ via GETTY IMAGES

Freshly minted 2010 Dream Tour qualifier, Owen Wright, featured in this blog in April this year, last time he beat Kelly Slater, as a wildcard, at Bells.  Check here for that story Wild-card-vs-World-champ

And here he is doing it again, as a wildcard, in “Porch”

The amazing thing is that the two heats – while five months and thousands of kilometres apart, basically went down in the same fashion – which just goes to show that good heat strategy works anywhere and against anyone!!

Both times Slater jumped out of the gate and both times Wright waited patiently for the sets and went about HIS job.

Here’s Wright from Bells, earlier this year…

“Out there, I just stayed on my own game and really just concentrated on what I was doing.  I just got the set waves and surfed them.”

And here’s Wright from a few days ago…

“It was a really tough heat with not many waves.  Kelly got the jump on me and opened up early so I sat and waited to try and get the bigger and better waves.”

See the strategy - pretty simple stuff really – but can you imagine how that wait for set waves could have been playing in Wright’s mind; with the 9X World Champ getting busy and racking up some solid scores.

Do you think you would have had the courage to sit and wait?

Obviously staying patient takes self-belief and confidence – but that comes from having a tried and tested game plan.

And if your game plan has worked before – why wouldn’t you try it again!?

So now you know the secret to beating Kelly Slater, and the value of rock solid, proven heat strategy.

You can watch the heat go down here…

And you can watch Kelly acknowledge that Owen got the best wave of the heat here…

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