Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker journalist and surfer William Finnegan weighed in on his experience at Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch pool, in an article written by him in the aforementioned publication.

He says that in September of this year Slater invited him to see the first Surf Ranch Pro and he had the chance to surf the wave of the moment.

When he came across Kelly's wave, the journalist fell under its spell. The first reaction he describes in the article is the need to get into the water and the attraction he felt when he saw that it was as perfect as everyone said it was. "Surfers spend a large part of their lives looking for high-quality waves. Now a machine has been invented that produces them on demand," he says.

“I felt as if something fundamental had changed, as if technology had, improbably, overtaken nature,” he adds.

“Watching it felt like falling in love with a robot, like being tricked by artificial intelligence,” the journalist says. And this mechanical and calculated quality was felt when he went to surf it. When asked what he thought of it, he replied: “It was not the kind of religious experience you expect.” “I shuddered once or twice. I could also see the two or three surfers sitting in the water next to the designated pilings, hoping I would fall off, and then each one shouting generously at me as I passed. It felt a bit like a ride at an amusement park. But it also felt like surfing next to a pier, on an unusually fast and clean wave,” Finnegan wrote of the experience.

The journalist raised some of the problems at the Surf Ranch: “In one important way, the wave was really hard to read. The usual warnings about what a wave is going to do next were absent. The artificial wave was effectively being made under your feet. You basically had to memorise where the slowest and fastest parts of the house were. The fast parts take you by surprise and you can’t recover if the wave breaks in front of you.”

“In the end, I thought the Surf Ranch Pro was pretty uninteresting. The pool made surfing feel tame, domesticated, almost like an indoor sport with a set program, like gymnastics or figure skating. The goal was to hit all your marks without any problems, then nail your Salchow or whatever. There was none of the mad scramble that electrifies an ocean competition when a big group pours in and some brave soul launches himself over the ledge into an angry, unpredictable barrel,” the journalist explained.

What Finnegan experienced that day, a few months ago, he sums up as an “entry level into surrealism.” And, in some way contrasting with all the criticism, according to the journalist, Kelly’s wave is “the best wave you will ever see in your life.”