Australian Stephanie Gilmore has fallen short of capping her seventh world title-winning season with a win at the Maui Pro.
The newly-crowned world surf champion fell at the semi-final hurdle in Hawaii as local Malia Manuel enacted some revenge for last year's loss to Gilmore in the final.
Needing 5.67 to overtake Manuel's combined score of 13.50, Gilmore could only manage 5.30 on her final wave.
"That was a tough one," she told the World Surf League broadcast.
"I had that one little opportunity in the end there. I knew it wasn't going to be enough.
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"The barrel was too small and the turn wasn't that good."
But the tight loss did little to wipe the smile from the Queenslander's face after equalling Layne Beachley's haul of seven titles a day earlier.
"I was trying to fight my way back, but that's alright," Gilmore said.
"I've had an incredible couple of days. Everyone's always like 'why are you always smiling so much?' I'm like 'a day in the life of me, you'd know why'."
Earlier, the 30-year-old barely scraped into the last four with a narrow win over Frenchwoman Johanne Defay in the quarter-finals.
The Queenslander, who won at Bells Beach, Rio and J-Bay and finished no lower than ninth this season, admitted the emotion of matching her mentor had taken its toll.
"I actually couldn't sleep at all," Gilmore said.
"I kind of was a little bit slow this morning and had to shake it off and get back into competition mode."
Three-time world champion Carissa Moore netted the only perfect 10 of the season on the final wave of 2018 to deny Manuel a maiden WSL win.
But it wasn't enough for third-placed Moore to supplant American Lakey Peterson as title runner-up, while Sally Fitzgibbons and Nikki Van Dijk were the next best Australians in sixth and 10th respectively.
