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Legendary Kelly Slater is the first major casualty of a new format for this year's World Surf League events, with world No.2 Julian Wilson nearly joining him.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks and it seems old surfers suffer the same struggles with change.

Minutes before hitting the water for his elimination heat at the season-opening World Surf League event on the Gold Coast, veteran Kelly Slater revealed he'd been caught out by a change to the format for this year's championship events.

In recent years a first-round heat failure has led to a one-on-one elimination heat to stay alive in the tournament.

But for 2019 the third-placed surfers from each opening round match-up will face off in another three-person heat with the top two progressing and the last-placed surfer knocked out.

That is exactly what happened to 11-time world champion Slater on Thursday as he was knocked out of the Gold Coast event he's won four times in the second round for just the second time in his illustrious career.

Slater was beaten by Australian Owen Wright and Brazil's Peterson Crisanto having revealed before the heat he woke up Thursday morning thinking he'd be facing the usual one-on-one second round format.

The new format also nearly accounted for world No.2 Julian Wilson after the Australian just scraped past Italy's Leonardo Fioravanti to secure second in his heat and a spot in the third round.

Wilson had been facing elimination for the first half of the 35-minute encounter but a two wave total of 11.23 out of 20 was just enough to pip Fioravanti's 10.66 and keep his event title defence on track.

"It's different, for sure, as opposed to surfing for first," Wilson told AAP.

"It's tricky for sure because you can come out of the gates and have a strong lead and be quite comfortable or you can be defending second place really easily too and playing tactics with third place.

"I was battling then between second and third, me and Leo, and that's kind of how the focus of my heat was. That's just how those heats pan out, you can't come third."

One surfer who is a fan of the format is Sally Fitzgibbons.

The three-time women's championship runner-up recovered from a disappointing opening round heat to best fellow Australians Macy Callaghan and Keely Andrew and ease into the third round.

"It's a new format, but an old one," Fitzgibbons told AAP.

"Actually the year I qualified this is the format.

"It's just changed a few times but coming back to that it feels like a comfy pair of shoes."