Kelly Slater lost his Round Two heat this morning, in crap waves, against an unknown Portugeuse journeyman, in front of a few dozen spectators. It was a graceless end to . . . what? Slater's 2013 title run, for sure. His career as a full-time ASP competitor? Probably. Slater will no doubt surf at an incredible level right into his handsome dotage, but let me give voice to the cliche that is rattling around in a lot of heads right now and say that we've just witnessed the end of the Slater Era.

I suggested in a New York Times piece a few years back

 that Slater take his neat and tidy 10 world titles and leave the game on his own terms, and a few months later he cruised to his 11th title, easily, offhandedly, stepping into that same weird age- and physics-defying place that belongs to him and him alone. And even this year, on occasion, there were moments of brilliance—he was sharp at Kirra, and magical at Cloudbreak, and won both contests going away.

But at Trestles and Hossegor (Teahupoo, too, really), Slater looked more human than superhuman, and today at Peniche he pretty much mailed it in. Pros aren’t scared of Slater like they used to be. Felipe Toledo ain't, for sure. That 16-year-old kid in Round One a few days ago. The guy this morning, Frederico Morais. Even Pat Gudauskas—in junky chest-high Lowers, anyway. Three years ago, Slater would've had each one in a headlock before the heat got started.

By all means, we can shift some blame to the ASP for Slater's quiet sigh of an exit. The whole lumbering low-budget production is almost designed to steer itself into the kind of boggy places—onshore Hossegor, fogged-in Lowers, dribbly Supertubos—that suck the life out of everybody's interest: webcast fans, sponsors, the pros themselves, Slater especially. So many things need to link up for a surf competition to look like anything but folly. Good waves, for starters. Slater and Fanning at Peniche this morning? Great, okay, tomorrow night let's have the Tigers and Sox play wiffle ball.

Then again, bad surf, and all the other aggregated forces nudging the arrow away from that tiny little A-grade competition bullseye, is what you sign up for. Slater knows this better than anybody. He committed himself fully to the entire 10-event 2013 ASP schedule, and came up short. Worse, for whatever reasons, he didn't seem to go down swinging.

Who knows what all of this means for Slater himself. Nobody gets inside that gleaming evenly-tanned dome. Slater has tested the furthest limits of age and athletic performance. He’s remained focused on one thing to a point where you wonder if he’s got one of those advantageous forms of autism. He is a miracle. He is also 41 years old. Some part of him, even if he doesn’t know it himself, must be begging for release. Slater will move on. He'll be fine.

On to the more selfish question. What does a Slater-less world tour mean for the rest of us? Lewis Samuels thrust his probing little hands into that topic a few years back, in a PostSurf column. Went a bit more over the top than I'd go, but his point is sound. A lot of us—most of us, to one degree or another—have made Slater a proxy for ourselves. Time to grow up. Lewis, the floor is yours. Go on. Make this day bleaker than it already is:

For fans, watching a great athlete stream by and then inevitably pass away is like losing the family dog. Sure, you feel bad for them. But they’re just fucking dogs—mostly we feel bad for ourselves, because watching a dog die reminds us of our own mortality and expiring dreams.

Slater’s comebacks over the years have allowed us all to breath deep and inhale a lungful of vitality—as he won again and again, we felt immortal again. But now? Well, in shaky times, no one wants one more reminder that we live in an age of decline, an era in which things once held bedrock-stable crumble to ruin around us. No one wants a reminder that death is coming, death is the end, and that believing otherwise is a pastime for emotional children, who still need to be lied to.

KELLY SLATER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. NOW WHAT?

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