Shane Beschen is the only pro surfer to score three 10s in the same heat, and he did it on three consecutive waves. A lot of WCT surfers—most, in fact—don't have three 10-point rides in their entire career. Beschen's triple-10 happened in Round Three of the 1996 Billabong Pro, the second event of the season, in good-not-great short-period surf at Kirra. Two weeks earlier, Kelly Slater had won the season-opening Coke Classic, and he would go on the win another six events that year while cruising to a fourth world title. Beschen won a pair of contests that year and in the final ratings was runner-up to Slater—his best finish as a pro.

The game was a little different in 1996. A surfer's heat score was made up of his or her best three waves, instead of best two (as it's been since 2000), so Beschen's 30-point total didn't just max the scale, it is, barring another rule change, an unbeatable mark. There have been a handful of perfect 20-point heats over the past two-plus decades. But just one 30-point heat.

If you are a pro surfing fan, this sounds pretty amazing. And it kind of was. But it was also a bit silly, in part because Beschen's three rides were great but not thrilling, but more because the judges overcooked the first score and were essentially forced to then overcook everything that followed.

Beschen was surfing against Fabio Gouveia. The waves were head-high, thin-lipped, long and fast but not powerful, and fairly easy to surf. A few impressive Round Three heat totals had already posted: Shane Dorian advanced with a 26.75, while Jeff Booth and Kaipo Jaquias, in separate heats, both scored 24.25. Three heats before the Beschen-Gouveia match, Slater inched past Mark Occhilupo, 22.25 - 21.55.

Being moving in for a closer look, keep in mind that any given score, in any given contest, has to be viewed in context of scores for that day. In other words, a 7.5 at Kirra won't just be a very different ride from a 7.5 at Pipeline or Trestles—it may also be different from the scores at Kirra itself just a day earlier. Conditions change. The baseline score will often rise or fall for reasons that sometimes make sense and just as often don't.

That said, any way you look at it, Beschen's opening ride, his first 10, is the very definition of what Derek Hynd used to call getting "ripped-on"—the opposite of ripped-off.

Shane begins with a longish if non-critical tube but has to break through foam to exit. He does a cruisy off-the-top, followed by a check-turn stall, gets back inside but doesn't fully disappear, comes out for an indifferent little cutback, then pulls into a closeout section. Again, context matters. Shane's score should be fitted into the matrix of scores that had built up so far that day. Yet there are so many deductible or at least nondescript moments—so much downtime and general flatness and non-perfection—that a 10 looks to be 100% out of the question. High 8, maybe.

Having just reset the bar to this ridiculous height, however, the judges are forced to award Beschen's next wave—a single tube, but much longer, faster, and more exciting than his opener—another 10.

Wave Three, same thing. A multi-part tube, none of which are especially interesting on their own, but again a better ride than his first wave, and thus again the judges have no choice but to throw a 10.

 video shows all three waves, with ambient sound, and what you mostly hear is an announcer trying his best to pump some excitement into the moment. The small crowd barely reacts to the first 10, then adds a few shouts and whistles for Shane's next two waves—but nothing like you'd expect for what, on paper, is a history-making pro surfing achievement. After the heat, a lone autograph-hunter stops Shane on the beach while everybody else in the background just carries on with their afternoon.

Beschen beat Shane Powell in Round Four, then lost to eventual contest winner Kaipo Jaquias in the quarters.

The non-event-ness of Beschen's 30-point heat was reflected in the surf press reporting that followed. 

 mentioned it in passing, then returned a few sentences later but only to note that Beschen's score was predicted by one and all to be a motivator for Slater, which proved not to be the case, as the champ lost his next heat to traveling partner Ross Williams.

 magazine was even less interested. "There'd been some great surfing: Occy scoring the highest total in Round One, at three-foot Duranbah; Beschen posting a new ASP record to getting three straight 10s in Round Two; and Slater only just squeezing past a rampaging Occhilupo [at] Kirra Point."

SURFER, on the other hand, played it up. "The highlight of the day—and perhaps the year—was Beschen's masterful timing and ultimate positioning in Heat 11. [He] had the whole beach screaming as he put together three perfect 10s, and broke Slater's still-drying record of 29.83, [scored] during that historic heat against Machado [last December] at the Pipe Masters. Beschen's fourth wave was given a 9.9 but should have been a 10 as well."

Beschen himself, years later, was not dismissive about his achievement, exactly, but not much excited, either. In a Temple of Surf podcast, he said the triple-10 heat was "cool," and that he was "completely in the moment," but also added that afterward "I maybe did an interview or something on the beach, then I was gone, and it was just like 'whatever.'"

One final thing. The long-standing rumor is that Beschen engineered the sport's only 30-point heat while tripping on acid. Shane has been asked about this, for the record, and to his great credit he has neither denied or confirmed.

SHANE BESCHEN'S HISTORIC YET UNDERWHELMING PERFECT "30" HEAT AT KIRRA (1996)

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