There's something surreal about watching Occy paddling out next to a bunch of kids who weren't even born when he won the Country Feeling Classic in1984, let alone had underarm hair when the king made his Tour comeback in'99. But the young South African hopefuls, led by Dale Staples who was the only grom to really snap his milk teeth at Oc's ever-carving heels, put on their poker faces for the occasion even though they were soiling their suits in the empyreal presence of the globe's greatest goofy-footer.

And just to heighten their empty-stomached awareness, Occy opened up with a playful barrel across the car park section. The elder statesmen then casually bided his time on the inside, before paddling up the point and stroking into a long wall right from the outside in the dying minutes of the heat. Oc seamlessly sewed together a four gouge combo to earn himself an 8.83, sending him through to meet Slater and Dayyan Neve in Heat 8 of the main event.

The early heats of the main event were surprisingly sluggish, with few big scores emanating from the judging tower. All the congregated swell-forecasters, couch-side meteorologists and salty locals were calling a fast-dying swell and predicting waist-high waves by noontime. But the Indian Ocean decided to prove them wrong and kept J–Bay's iconic ruler-straight lines curving in from the south-west for most of the afternoon.

Adriano de Souza, whose name was being bandied about the beach this morning as a serious contender for the big money rounds this year, stood out with a 9.0 against Jordy. The young Brazilian, currently ranked fourth, has made the quarters in both his cracks at J-Bay and if today's performance is anything to go by, he is on form and hungry for points. "I was stoked to get that one ‘cos Jordy knows this place so well. But I've learnt a bit in the last two years and if you find the bomb you've got a way better chance of scoring high. So I just waited around the back, and I got the bomb," said a stoked de Souza after posting the first 9.0 of the event.

An explosive concoction of high-octane power surfing and increased ocean activity saw Heat 7, which will forever be etched into the minds of the hysterical crowd, push the contest to critical mass. Taylor Knox, who was functioning at a transcendental level, and Parko literally had flames licking their tails as they traded barrels and threw down a series of serious carves in between the ridiculous tube time, sending the beach into a spasm of hooting. Knox's double-barrel 9.9 was completely mind-blowing, but was just-slightly eclipsed by Parko's final wave, where he stylishly disappeared not once, not twice, but three times into the icy depths of a near-perfect J-Bay bomb. After 17-years on tour this is Knox's highest scoring heat ever, as well as the highest scoring heat to be penciled at Jeffery's, and was a magnificent and humbling thing to behold. After this display of lunacy, the Slater/Occy/Neve match-up seemed a tad deflated, with a glove-handed Slater totally dominating over Oc and Neve.

Fanning and Supers go together like Indo and Bintang, and Mick brought the white lightning to the afternoon, tying together his rubber-man turns and posting a respectable 16.87. The back-handers, who have a notoriously difficult time mapping their way through the tricky Supers sections, put on a promising show. Freddy P managed to flex his muscles in the frigid water, linking driving bottom turns with powerful off-the-top jabs, whilst South African Royden Bryson finished with the highest screw-foot score of the day.

The show has begun with the very definition of what it takes to make a powerful stop on the Dream Tour. But the filth is not a trick of the imagination; log-in tomorrow to find out who's going through from Round 2.