Showing no signs of a lingering stomach flu, Filipe Toledo dominated the best men's heat of the day in the men's QS Vans US Open of Surfing. Matched up against San Clemente's Ian Crane, Japan's Shun Murakami, and Brazilian Hizunome Bettero, Toledo displayed the same stunning level of surfing that led to his landmark victory at the Championship Tour's Corona Open J-Bay last week in South Africa. The Brazilian barely looked winded after his heat win, admitting that it was his first surf in a few days, not that it mattered. He barely missed sticking two huge Hail Mary punts (are they really Hail Marys for Filipe, though?), one a Superman, the other a corked 540 out into the flats of a dumpy HB shorepound. If he'd landed either move, he would have pushed the scale to its limit.
