Skill choices are not that simple. What works well for one person may not work well for another. Builds are highly dependent on a given player's physical strengths. People with fast reflexes can make a given build (i.e. interrupt mesmer) really effective, whereas people with slower reflexes may be better at something that isn't as frantic (echo nuker, maybe). Those guys in the championship games have awesome reflexes, or they wouldn't have gotten there.

That having been said, I think that Ether Prodigy would only be effective in certain situations.

The pros:
+4 energy regen

The cons:
Lose all enchantments
Exhaustion
Take 2 points of damage for every point of energy remaining when the spell wears off.

So you have to run a build that requires no enchantments and consumes a great deal of energy. Although, I suppose you can get away without the latter if you have a really good monk.

Alternately, this sounds ideal if you're planning to go up against energy denial/enchantment stripping mesmers. Given some of the other builds I saw, it's safe to say that this is the norm in the tournaments.

I don't know that I'd want to use it for PvE or 4 on 4, though. I'm just not impressed by the cost/benefit ratio.