Wet ‘n’ Wild with Rockin’ Fig:

The ASP World Championship Tour now heads south in Australia to Bells Beach, Victoria, for the $320,000 Rip Curl Pro Tuesday to March 29.

Bells is the longest-running pro surf event in Oz, dating back to 1973.

It’s got classic righthand peelers and can handle swell as big as 15 feet plus. Sometimes it has super-clean offshore wind perfection, too.

The defending champ is Aussie Taj Burrow, who finished second in the overall WCT standings last year with the big early-season win. The current points leader and winner of the first event on the Gold Coast at Snapper Rocks, eight-time world champ Kelly Slater, still hasn’t confirmed being in this second event.

Runner-up to Slates at that Quiksilver Pro is last year’s world champ Mick Fanning, who is getting married this weekend before the start of the surf contest, so it’ll be a couple of busy weeks for him.

Third in the current standings is Jeremy Flores, the French man who is holding down the highest placing by a European surfer ever.

Big Australian Bede Durbidge is tied for third, and fellow Aussie Joel Parkinson sits in the fifth spot.

Orange County surfer Chris Ward, a former Quiksilver finalist, who missed the first contest due to some personal problems, is scheduled to compete at Bells. Some former winners include Australian Mark Richards, who won it four times, in ‘78, ‘79, ’80 and ‘82; Hawaiian Sunny Garcia who won in ‘95, ’96 and 2000; Tom Curren, who won in ’85 and ‘90; two-time winner Andy who won in ’02 and ’03. Also having wins was Slater in ‘06, Parko in ’04 and Fanning in ’01 as a wild card, to name a few.

The women will be competing at Bells too for an $85,000 purse Wednesday to March 24.

First in the standings is Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich winning the first event, while second was Australia’s Samantha Cornish.

Will last year’s reigning world champ, Stephanie Gilmore, rebound from a tough eighth-place start at Snapper? We’ll see.

On the ASP World Qualifying Series, the Americans are doing quite well. San Clemente’s Pat Gudauskas is leading; Oxnard’s Nathaniel “Nate Dog” Curran is second; Huntington Beach’s Brett “Simpo” Simpson is third; Florida’s Gabe Kling is fourth and Brazilian Raoni Monteiro is fifth.

Other notables include S.C.’s Mike Losness in 13th; Dane Gudauskas at 17th; Cory Lopez (former WCT surfer) at 24; H.B.’s Brad Ettinger at 92nd (who I saw ripping up the north side of the pier the other day) and Surf City’s Shaun Ward and Micah Byrne holding equal-95th positions.

It’s still early on that tough road around the globe. Meanwhile, it’s kinda feeling like summer lately with the nice weather. The water’s warming up, too, with more combo swells, and the beaches are filling up from those early tanners.

See ya in the lineup. Fig over and out.

RICK FIGNETTI is a 10-time West Coast champion and a longtime KROQ-FM surfologist. He owns a surf shop on Main Street. You can reach him at (714) 536-1058.