Olympic bronze medallist Owen Wright has been eliminated at the WSL event in Mexico but fellow Australian Morgan Cibilic survived a day of upsets to keep his hopes of qualifying for the tour-ending finals firmly in his grasp.
World No.4 Cibilic beat Lucca Mesinas in their third-round battle on day two of the Corona Open at Barra de la Cruz.
The win set up a round of 16 clash with Italian Leonardo Fioravanti, who beat Wright in their third-round showdown.
Wright entered the event on a high after his back-to-the-wall bronze medal effort at the Tokyo Games.
But he struggled to find a decent-scoring second wave in his battle with Fioravanti, and ended up losing 13.37 to 9.87.
Only the top five-ranked surfers will qualify for the season-ending WSL finals in California, where they will fight it out for the world title.
Wright is currently ranked 20th on the standings and is too far back to qualify.
A deep run in Mexico would put Cibilic, in just his first year on tour, in the box seat to claim one of those five spots, given that only the Tahiti Pro remains before the finals.
Ethan Ewing and Jack Robinson are the other Australian to advance to the last 16 in Mexico, along with the likes of world No.1 Gabriel Medina and Olympic gold medallist Italo Ferreira.
But there were some huge upsets.
Indonesia's Rio Waida caused a boilover when his two-wave total of 11.33 was enough to take out world No.3 Filipe Toledo.
Mateus Herdy caused another big shock when he beat world No.5 Griffin Colapinto in the final heat of the day.
Colapinto's loss was a huge boost to Cibilic given how close they are to each other in the rankings.
Ewing will be aiming to continue the upsets when he takes on Medina in the round of 16.
Kelly Slater's clash with world No.2 Italo Ferreira will be one of the most highly-anticipated showdowns of the round.
