Kelly Slater has no plans to go to the European leg of the CT, he said in an interview conducted live yesterday during the Surf Ranch Pro finals where he placed third, his best performance since the 2016 Pipe Masters.

“I’m not planning to go to Europe at the moment, we’ll see what happens,” he told Rosy Hodge when asked if we’d see him in the next tournaments, and immediately turned his attention back to the waves they were surfing.

Slater has only participated in two CT events this year, including the Founders Cup held three months ago, also at his pool. As he has been reporting on social media, he is not taking any time off from recovering from his broken foot at JBay last year.

Although he has been seen surfing well, these days at the Surf Ranch, in the swell of the decade in Fiji and also at the Founders Cup, it seems that he is not 100%.

He also stated that he wants 2019 to be his last year on tour and that he will give it his all this year. It could be that he is trying to save energy for next year's challenge.

One of the implications of this is the WSL's wildcards for injuries, which are almost always one, and can become two in cases of force majeure. The problem is that there are now three serious surfers injured in addition to him, John John and Caio Ibelli. We'll have to see how the WSL resolves this.