On Sat, Apr 25, dozens of surfers competed in the 2026 Vans Jack’s Surfboards Pro Qualifier Series 4000 event in Huntington Beach, Calif for the chance to qualify into the World Surfing League’s top level. Among those surfing in the delayed Round of 64 was Luke Guinaldo, a 21-year-old from the host city who was seeking to win the whole event after coming in ninth place in the previous two editions.
Guinaldo was slated to compete in the sixth heat of the Round of 64 on the men’s side of this tournament on Fri, Apr 24, but all the surfing heats scheduled to go on that day were postponed because of a shark sighting on Thur, Apr 23 off the coast. Huntington Beach lifeguard officials implemented a shutdown of the beach area and the heats were rescheduled to the morning of Sat, Apr 25.
The men’s Round of 64 was the first event of the day and the heats got started at around 7 a.m local time. At around 8:45 a.m., Guinaldo got into the water to compete in his heat against three other surfersand he only felt comfortable surfing on one wave during the 20-minute period that he was allowed to surf in.
Guinaldo failed to make it out of his heat and he said afterwards that “it didn’t go the way I wanted it to go”. Posting a final score of 2.43, Guinaldo fell very short of the score he needed to get to make it out of his heat. Fellow American surfer Matton Bain had a combined score of 8.06 across his two highest scores in advancing to the Round of 32 along with Finnish surfer Eeli Timperi.
In spite of a rough day on the choppy waters, Guinaldo reflected on why he loves surfing as a native of Surf City USA. “My favorite thing about surfing is like seeing all my friends out there and pusheach other to be better and we all want to be better than each other, but it’s a very friendly competitiveness”, Guinaldo said.
The young surfer also has a very high motivation factor for his surfing future as he described himself as “super-competitive” and he likes to challenge himself.
Finally, Guinaldo offered some good advice towards the less-experienced and younger surfers competing in this tournament by saying “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Believe in yourself. Things don’t always go the way you want them to go, but you can truly be whatever you want to become, whatever you want to be if you put in hard work and do what you gotta do to get there.”
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