John John Florence
The overwhelming dominance of John John Florence ensured legitimacy was restored at the top end of the tour. | Photo: @worldsurflols @peterkingphoto

The Top 20 Surfers in the World (Right Now)!

Part one in a four-part series!

Okay, so 2016 might have been a god-awful year but in our little pro surf world, it all ran to script. Legitimacy restored at the top end of the tour, continued ascendancy of women’s surfing, big waves etc.

Any critical eye trained on the WCT will see a moribund sport desperately in need of renewal. Renewal of format, of location. The whole narrative structure is looking tired: same old thing trotted out for thirty years. Too many dead heats, not enough peak performance. The format rewards conservatism and that’s exactly what we get dished up. Slater has been the exception to the rule for far too long and when he goes, that goes with it.

Since Rory abdicated hasn’t it been a hoot watching the surf writer step up? Establishing their bona fides: I’m a print journalist, I’ve got a blog, I know how to use a semi-colon. It’s grand, grand entertainment.

I feel I should establish my credentials. Surfer Mag, Surfers Journal, Surfline, Tracks, Surfing World, White Horses, Swellnet and a couple Euro ones I can’t remember.

But what if that’s all a pile of shit?

What if there is no superiority, real or imagined, of the published (surf) writer over the anonymous commenter? What if the anonymous commenter really is the highest and rarest form of the art? I believe it is, and in that spirit, I throw this take of the top 20 surfers in the world, right now, out there.

Not as any kind of definitive version but as kindling to the flame of the eternal commenter. Long may they reign.

20. Corey Colapinto

It’s a cruel but pertinent fact that California’s excessive continental shelf turns Pacific swells into surf as lugubrious and predictable as a 90’s sitcom, perfect for longboards or anything with inbuilt trim. Most surf spots between Point Conception and the border suck for shortboards, with the odd exception. Don’t shame yourself and and name the obvious counter-examples.

The reverse is true  in Australia. Thus Corey Colapinto. Thus Joel Tudor. Thus Ryan Burch. Thus the shortboard revolution and everything progressive in surfing happening in Australia (even if at the hands of beatnik Californians harnessing the power of post-war blue-collar Australia and trust-fund America) then exported back to California. Current example: Dan Thomson and micro-planing hulls. Time and time again. History repeating.

Yet still this phony, internecine war between short and long, progressive and retro persists. Take Dane Reynolds out of the equation and Colapinto is the second most progressive surfer in California, hence America, after Ryan Burch. A progressive mid-lengther, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron, who takes the white man jazz of the shortboard revolution into a whole new dimension.

19. Derek Hynd

There’s a certain orthodoxy been developing on the Grit. It’s a justifiable reaction against forty years of surfing being represented as some kind of mystical communion with nature BS in the surf media. It downplays and even denigrates the lifer, the loner, the nomad, the dedicated few who pursue surfing to its ultimate ends.

Wild Bill Finnegan said a lot of assholes surf and some of them surf well. To which I would say, so fucking what. Hemingway was a bonafide cunt, Gauguin gave Tahitian wahines syphilis, Gautama Buddha walked out on a young family etc.

The implication that surfing should improve moral character or cure cancer is ludicrous. It’s just another glorious, non-essential thing humans do between birth and death to wrest meaning out of a random and hostile universe. Hence, what separates us from the animals, hence art.

Isn’t it true that in our tiny little lives of quiet desperation we find ourselves a gal and settle down, selling ourselves like cattle for a scrap of grass and a roof, horizons shrinking every year towards infirmity and death, stripped of all hope, incubating our hate with a secret shame which seeps out through the keyboard (magnificently at the Grit!).

Surfing has been co-opted by capitalism magnificently but if you kick out of the cradle to grave consumer track and go your own way, as Dekka Hynd has done, it’s still one of the most revolutionary trips going. A pure waste of time with no measureable output. Fins-free surfing might be the last act untouched and untouchable by the domesticated and homogenized herd. A necessary antidote against the psychic impoverishment of a technocratic society. If you’ll pardon a little more pseudo-philosophical dick-gazing: isn’t it true that in our tiny little lives of quiet desperation we find ourselves a gal and settle down, selling ourselves like cattle for a scrap of grass and a roof, horizons shrinking every year towards infirmity and death, stripped of all hope, incubating our hate with a secret shame which seeps out through the keyboard (magnificently at the Grit!).

Meanwhile, Mr Hynd soars towards an a-historical death high-lining at J-Bay like an albatross who never needs to touch land, brutal and singular as Ahab. Is he sinning against life for daring to indulge this obsession with an implacable grandeur? By structuring his life to follow the lightning flash?

I say, no!

Restless, relentless non-linear exile who evades the technological whip I salute you. You Soviets of the spirit who mock him can eat a bag of dicks.

Also, practically speaking, work is a cooked goose, no matter what moral puritans like Bill Finnegan say, so you better figure out something to do to pass the time. Surfer as throw-forward as posited by Alvin Toffler might be an idea whose time has come.

18. Bob Martinez 

Why does Bob Martinez look better than Gabe Medina on a wave? Nothing controversial about that inquiry.  The answer was supplied on the Grit this by wave savant Bradley Gerlach, author of the soon to be released tantric surf manual Wave Ki. Brad ID’d the great stylistic advantage of using the hips, but limited the observation to small wave surfing.

The observation extends into other realms  and when we watch Bob M surf we can clearly see how devastatingly effective it is in medium sized surf as well, especially backhand surfing in good Point surf. The hips are the fulcrum around which the board is leveraged through the turn. Upper-body quiet, knees and ankles fluid.

The main thing I love about Bob’s surfing, and miss so much watching live, is that it is relatable to crib the parlance of Turpel. In my fantasy, idealised version of my own surfing, I’m trying to surf like Bobby, not say, Clay Marzo, whose surfing is utterly incomprehensible to me.

And you too.

17. Stu Kennedy

When you cross the border from Byron shire and get your passport stamped at the gates of the Republik of Lennox Head you are entering the finest surfing Nation on Earth. You remember the penultimate scene in Taxi Driver? Before Trav Bickle goes ham? Harvey Keitels pimp is slow-dancing with Jodie Foster’s prostitute. He leans in and whispers in her ear, “How much I need you. Come to me baby. When I’m close to you like this I feel so good.  I only wish every man could know what it’s like to be loved by you. That every woman everywhere had a man who loves her like I love you”.

That’s an accurate depiction of the interior monologue of every surfer lucky enough to reside in the shadow of of Lennox Point. Sunbeams dance out of our hearts when we surf the Point. Henry Lawson, Walt Whitman, Ralph Emerson couldn’t conjure up such an earthly paradise for the working man and woman.

No doubt this excess in nature’s blessings can be dessicating. There is nothing here for people seeking knowledge, education or self-improvement. What it demands are clear-sighted souls, and that it contains in abundance. Its principal genius lies in the innovation to the surfboard, something seen when Kennedy unleashed the Dan Thomson designed Sci-Phi at Snapper.

The Point carves chunks from bodies from pre-adolescence, a natural violence which imbues the lineup. A 52-year-old dentist from Manhattan beach, an ageing alpha male, got his teeth knocked out the other day. I’m not condoning ultra-violence as a method of constraining the more excessive impulses that human beings bring to a lineup predisposed to order, just noting it works wonderfully well here.

Do you understand Lennox Head, where our local punk band is called Booze Hag and the chief ditty written by legendary glasser/sander Kenchy glories in the title Off My Head In Lennox Head (not available on Tunes)?

Good, then you understand Stu Kennedy. Top Ten after the Aussie leg.

16. Clay Marzo

Marzo is the maestro of the late-spin-under-the-lip-and-knife-into-the-tube, a prerequisite to deep tube-riding on shallow reefs. You’ll see that guy every shallow reef you surf, sitting deepest and making calm under violent upheaval.

Sure the forehand fin-ditch-to-disaster-one-foot-recovery gets a big old, but that is a strange inversion of the pro surfing game. He saves his full-blown power turns as special sauce. I’d rather watch him surf than some ball of squat muscle wanksnap their way to the beach any day of the year.

A gaping Marzo-sized conceptual hole in the field exists every year at Cloudbreak while he is alive.

15. Mason Ho

I was slow jumping on the Ho train, mostly because in this world hype reigns and so rarely justified. What got me hooked wasn’t any of the web clips but a live heat at Bells. He rode a bigger board. There was creativity, historical lineage in every line he drew across a lumpy Bell beach canvas. He bought shit surf to life in a way that no other tour surfer keyed in to standardised testing could.

Now the wave of the winter at Pipe with a classic hood ornament look back. One more compelling argument for renewal in a conservative Tour format and locations that specialise in quashing talent like Mason Ho’s. Imagine an Indonesian leg with Mason.

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Just in: Sharkbanz fails horribly!

Young man attacked in Florida wearing his new Christmas present!

And let the lawsuits begin! Shark repellent magnetic technology’s PowerBalance moment! First, let us read the tale of brave Florida surfer Zack Davis and his fight against a watery beast in The Mirror shall we?

Zack Davis, 16, was surfing in Florida, US, when he was attacked by a Blacktip shark.

The schoolboy, who had never been attacked by a shark before, says he was wearing a new shark repellent armband Christmas present for the first time when he was attacked.

The attack left him with gashes across his arm which required almost 50 stitches.

His mother has been left outraged and is seeking a refund from the maker of the anti-shark device.


The local CBS12 channel reports the teenager ended up in hospital with a large jaws bite on his arm.


Zack says he was wearing a new band with magnetic technology that advertises it repels sharks away from swimmers.


“I got this for Christmas,” Zack said.

The green plastic band that looks like a watch with no face “is a shark band and it was supposed to keep sharks away and the first time I wore it, and I go surfing a lot, but the first time I wore it- I get bit. “

“Zack’s mum, who is shaken by all this says she hopes to at least get her $80 back for the Shark Banz that the family say didn’t work.


The armband maker has been approached for comment but has yet to respond.

An outraged mom, a bloody mess, a Christmas present gone horribly awry! And do you recall how surf brand Modom incorporated Sharkbanz tech into very expensive leashes ($180 in the U.S. $250 in Australia)? Do you recall how our friend’s at Stab jumped in with both feet, thrilling at the product and pushing it through parent company Surfstitch? Oh read a wonderful piece of investigative journalism from the dearly departed Rory Parker here!

Now that the wheels are all the way and spectacularly off… read this sentence again… “the first time I wore it, and I go surfing a lot, but the first time I wore it- I get bit.” What will happen? Of course lawyers are circling the Davis family, promising forever riches. But will Modom pull the leash? Will Stab issue an apology? Will they disappear the embarrassing post?

Let’s wait and see!

But while we’re waiting have you ever seen a cooler post-attack look than Zack Davis’s?

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So long Sharkbanz… Hello fame!

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Lewis Samuels
"How's your small-wave game these days, sweetie?" Lewis' voice has a raspy, lung-cancerous tone to it. "Fine sir!" says the professional surfer Kelly Slater, laughing nervously.

An Open Letter to Lewis Samuels!

A message in a digital bottle for San Francisco’s sultan of surf lit…

Dear Lewis,

First. Please accept my apology for the uncomfortable and public nature of this letter. I am drunk and have been writing Christmas cards all afternoon.

The reason I cast this message in a bottle in hopes that it washes ashore on your screen is because I have a gang of angry and anonymous misfits who are in need of their daily dose of unhinged surf lit.

I fear my unique and often misspelled last name will be tarnished if I do not find a replacement for Rory Parker. You see, the last time I got drunk and emotional and got behind the keys, Derek coaxed me into giving personal stories a whirl. I could tell he was growing bored of me and my WSL analysis so I poured double when nobody ordered a shot. It has inspired others to do the same.

I have let the foul odor of bad writing  into the room.

While we’ve all been singing Rory’s praises, it was you if I recall that actually had your name mentioned on webcast for what you wrote. Something along the lines of Dion Atkinson’s surfing being meat and potatoes without the sour cream? Either way he called you out and your Power Rankings got pulled.

Can you come over and burn sage wisdom?

Not only for fun but to remember what it’s like to make pros squirm. Don’t you want to feel that again?

While we’ve all been singing Rory’s praises, it was you if I recall that actually had your name mentioned on webcast for what you wrote. Something along the lines of Dion Atkinson’s surfing being meat and potatoes without the sour cream? Either way he called you out and your Power Rankings got pulled.

Whatever it was. You rattled him. Probably ruined his life forever. That’s what the wolves of this website want. They want an outspoken hero. Someone that isn’t afraid to call out big brands and their team riders. Somebody who isn’t tied to the industry coin.

Rory had his wife’s income to allow him to be unabashed, but you have Google.

I meant to talk to you about this in person three days ago but you are like the Absinthe ferry on that neon green Lost Rock Up. For the last five months I’ve been seeing you down the beach, always on the peak I want to be on but can never get too. Maybe if Mayhem was my foam daddy again I could move like a ghost between peaks, but for now I clunk behind you in the whitewash, never to be formally acquainted.

So what do you think Lewy?

You ready to make your triumphant return?

Can you save us from Neal Korny?

Sincerely,

Jake Tellkamp

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Top 5 Worst Pro Surfers!

To take as your date to a New Year's Eve party!

A New Year’s Eve party is a wonderful time, maybe even the most wonderful time of the year. The tuxedos and ball gowns. The champagne and hope. The glittering, sparkling, glorious, unvarnished future. The old acquaintance be forgot. The auld lang syne. It is difficult to have a bad time during New Year’s Eve. Some would even argue impossible but I will say if you take one of these five surfers as your date you’ll wish for an extinction event before the ball drops!

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1) Occy: Mark Occilupo is a legend to be sure. An icon of our beloved pastime and would be such a good look on any arm. Except after a certain hour would you like to know what happens to the Occ? Oh I’ll tell you! He turns into an unstoppable karaoke machine! He will sing song after song after song after song and you will finally drag to your bed at 5 am with Don’t Stop Believin’ stuck in your head for all of 2017.

2) Cori Schumacher: A virtual guarantee that you won’t make it until even 10:30 pm. Don’t believe? Listen to this!

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3) Mason Ho: I don’t know that there has ever been a man in history so on top of his game. Mason is an incredible surfer in both big waves and small, has the quickest wit, is handsome, funny, well-liked, kind, humble and generous. And his near perfection will throw your doing-the-best-I-can-with-what-I-have into stark relief. Do you want that? Do you want to be Jonah Hill to Mason’s Leo DiCaprio? Exactly.

4) Laird Hamilton: The worst part about new year’s eve is the resolutions. The empty swears to get better. To improve. And in taking Laird you are taking a walking resolution. The party goers would crowd, peppering your plus one with questions. “Should I drink my bulletproof coffee before or after my ice bath?” “Yoga or barre?” “Push-ups on the beach or on the grass?” Ugh!

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5) Pottz: I’m sure at one time Martin Potter’s animal magnetism would have been the perfect addition to any ensemble. Today, though, he would narrate your night with the bland monotone of Eeyore. “Yeah the evening is starting off alright. I mean this is one of the nights of the year where you’ve got to be able to make it to the drop and you have to be able to do it in a technical way. You’ve got to manufacture the exit though….” etc. etc. etc. etc.

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Bunker77
Bunker and photographer Art Brewer (left) and Bunker, stills from the movie Bunker77. "Without all those incredible Brewer photos, we wouldn’t even be talking about Bunker Spreckels," says Matt Warshaw. "Bunker in many ways was Art’s muse. He made Art a better photographer, helped bring out the genius. That whole corrupted Golden Boy thing Bunker had going on was powerful enough that Art had to pay attention, had to lift his game, had to shoot more than just guys riding waves. Art and Bunker were very good for each other." | Photo: Art Brewer

Bunker: “A train wreck’s still a train wreck!”

Matt Warshaw dissects the man behind the legend of Bunker Spreckels.

Bunker77 is a documentary, or shrine, built to celebrate the surfer Bunker Spreckels, who died aged 27 after walloping a fifty-mill inheritance in six years. The film was made by fan-boy Takuji Masuda and features animations, talking heads, montages, you know the style.

I’ve always liked the photos and stories that surrounded Adolph Bernard Spreckels III, the great-grandson of German-born sugar baron Claus Spreckels and stepson to the movie star Clarke Gable. Bunker was lucky enough to pal up with the Californian photographer Art Brewer and writer Craig Stecyk just as his star was starting to rise.

Good-looking, dangerous stud with money meets a brilliant young photographer and writer equals…posterity.

Is the film good? The Hollywood Reporter writes:

“Masuda seldom penetrates Spreckels’ dazzling levels of artifice and reinvention in a way that yields much psychological or sociological insight, instead retreating into repetitive waves of oh-gee-wow hagiography.

Bunker77 is yet another paean to a reckless, instinctive ground-breaking whose own stylistic stance is familiar to the point of cliche.”

It might be heretic to ask, but the review raised a good point. Was Bunker Spreckels the surfer, the man, anything even close to the legend?

Who else dare we ask but Matt Warshaw, custodian of all things surf etc. 

BeachGrit: So the movie Bunker77 is doing the rounds. It is a beautifully made film, even if it is cut from the same cloth stylistically as Dogtown, Bustin Down the Door etc, with terrific archival shots and talking head interviews. Watch it and you’re convinced Bunker Spreckels is the “true American rebel” and the “most radical surfer on the North Shore”. Are these posits true?

Warshaw: Bunker came up with the tucked-under rail, which a lot of people who know more than I do about board design claim was the last big important piece of the shortboard revolution to lock into place. He was one of the first guys to ride Backdoor. But “most radical surfer on the North Shore” is way overcooked. 1969 was Bunker’s big push in Hawaii, and on the North Shore that year you got Lopez, BK, Reno, Jock, Hakman, Hamilton, Cabel, Sam Hawk, Jimmy Lucas — it was Murderer’s Row. Bunker was good, but he wasn’t gonna out-radical any of those guys.

How about the “rebel” part?

Well, he sure looked the part. Starts off super pretty, with a touch of fuck-off, then the fuck-off takes over and takes him from pretty to louche. Ends up kinda paunchy, hairline in retreat, but still cool as fuck. Beyond that, I guess you can make a case that surfing was such a powerful force that it led Bunker to torch his life, more or less. People think that’s romantic — chase the dream, light the whole box of matches at once, rather than normalize your trip.

You can roll your eyes and the excess, and the waste, and the pointless OD. But Bunker also followed a surfing path that wasn’t laid out for him. Pro surfing wasn’t a thing hit his peak, and even if it had been he was never going to head in that direction. So he took his big bag of cash, walked away from the family connections and career opportunities, and went full swashbuckler

Sounds like you’re not buying the rebel deal.

I’m not immune to that kind of glamour, or whatever you’d call it. I spent my childhood tagging along after Jay Adams, and I still go pretty swoony over Mickey Dora. Beautiful people full of id and flair and aggression. But if I think about it for more than a few seconds, the ridiculousness comes through. Especially when the rebel in question isn’t rebelling against anything that matters. Jay Adams never actually rebelled, he was just hardcore ADD. Christian Fletcher rebelling against Damien Hardman, when Christian’s getting all the magazine covers? Fuck off. Rebellious and radical and platinum-grade cool, I mean, that’s Ali and Bowie and not many others. Dora, if you insist on putting a surfer in there. But Dora surfed like Miles Davis played trumpet, and if his life choices were questionable — criminal, even — he invented a surf-at-all-costs ethos that the rest of us can relate to, if not emulate. Bunker, to me, comes down to good looks, a decent skill set in the water, huge charisma, and a willingness to blow through stacks of money. I don’t know. Give him points for style, but a train wreck is still a train wreck. I’ll watch like anybody else, and maybe even feel a twinge of jealously. I appreciate cool. But I love being 56 and healthy. “Hope I die before I get old” — Pete Townsend’s been cringing about that since his late 20s.

Starts off super pretty, with a touch of fuck-off, then the fuck-off takes over and takes him from pretty to louche. Ends up kinda paunchy, hairline in retreat, but still cool as fuck.

You ever talk to Art Brewer, Spreckels’ personal photographer, about his time with Bunker?

No, but the stories I believe are epic. And I should add that, without all those incredible Brewer photos, we wouldn’t even be talking about Bunker Spreckels. Bunker in many ways was Art’s muse. He made Art a better photographer, helped bring out the genius. That whole corrupted Golden Boy thing Bunker had going on was powerful enough that Art had to pay attention, had to lift his game, had to shoot more than just guys riding waves. Art and Bunker were very good for each other.

Why lionise a drug-fucked man who was consumed by vanity ? Is it a retro-fashion thing, the way he looks in his fur coats and headbands? The move in surfing towards going straight on thick, no-rockered boards, skill replaced by showiness?

Fashion and showiness, for sure. But I think more. You can roll your eyes and the excess, and the waste, and the pointless OD. But Bunker also followed a surfing path that wasn’t laid out for him. Pro surfing wasn’t a thing when he hit his peak, and even if it had been he was never going to head in that direction. So he took his big bag of cash, walked away from the family connections and career opportunities, and went full swashbuckler —became a Zap Comix surfing cartoon character. Rock-and-rolled it to death. I mean, who knows? Most of us are as boring as we are because we don’t have a choice. Give a person enough money and charm and good looks and maybe it’d be hard not to become Bunker Spreckels.

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