More importantly, how does it feel for this once golden haired cutie pie with brown nipples like hard currants to have reached the stately number of 63?

Two days back, the world was sent into a bit of spin with the news that Tom Carroll had, likely, busted his neck while surfing windy little two-footers at North Narrabeen. 

Instagram posts urging for thoughts and prayers were circulated and mainstream news outlets breathlessly reported the injury as grave and serious etc. 

I call Thomas and he is at the local shopping mall picking up a few things from the Black Friday sales, getting a spike of coffee.

“I got so malled,” he laughs. 

Thomas, who turned sixty-three the day before the wipeout, describes the attention as “weird” and says it came down to someone on the beach with a camera “getting a nice shot of me in a neck brace. It makes for good drama.” 

So how is he? 

“Well, I’m walking around! I had a few stitches and a shaken up neck. As anyone who’s had a spinal injury can attest, it’s a fucking bitch. I think I’m just lucky. I had a real shock.”

More importantly, how does it feel for lil Tommy Carroll, golden haired cutie pie with little brown nipples like hard currants to have reached the stately number of sixty-three? 

“I was feeling pretty good until I fricken head-butted my board and fucking got scorpioned over my neck. That told me how old I really was. Fucken hell my neck was really crunched. You’re so vulnerable in that position.”

Do you reflect on the passage of time? You’re well on the way to seventy; Occ turns sixty next year..

“Yeah, it’s a trip. We’re all travelling through life and doing our thing and a lot of stuff is going on and it gets quicker as you get older. Life doesn’t get any slower and you wake up one day and you’re sixty three! Oh shit! And Occy is sixty next year and that’s extraordinary! All my fondest memories of Occ are from when we were on tour and the early days together fucking singing karaoke, ripping the bag out of waves, just pure fun. It doesn’t make sense that we’re in our sixties. A big part of me is in that kid zone. In a childlike and hopefully not a childish manner. 

Thomas reflects on those times he meets people, thinks, Jesus, these guys are old and has to pull himself up, like, ‘This person is twenty years younger than me.’ 

“I’m blown away. I never thought at sixty-three I’d be riding a five-one. That wasn’t in the manual. I thought we had to have retire from our competitive career at thirty, have a family. I conditioned myself that way and that’s exactly what happened to me. I had to bust that conditioning out although I wouldn’t say it’s all gone. But I had to try and move on to fresher ideas and be open to new ideas.”

Nostalgia and bolted on beliefs, he says, are a killer. He recalls, back in the eighties, the revulsion in the lineup whenever someone appeared on anything but a light variation of the thruster. 

“That was it! If you  came into the lineup with a bodyboard or a longboard, the boys would kick you out. I saw people bleed over it! I always thought it was kinda crazy how people fought over waves but now you can see how open it is. You can ride anything. The collective mind has broadened. There’s more surfers on the planet than ever yet, for the most part, we can surf together on these different crafts in the most extraordinary ways without killing each other – which is what we would’ve done in the eighties. If some people want to go bak to that, go for it, run the experiment. My experience tells me it won’t work out well.”

Thomas says he got “kickback” for riding a standup back when it first turned on and that he loves longboards, bodysurfing, foiling, any kind of surfing. 

“Any way of surfing, fuck it, I’ll try it. Let’s do this shit. My pathology is, fuck, if I can’t do a kind of surfing I’ve fucking gotta do it. The challenge ins on! That’s helped me engage with a real enthusiasm again. Foiling brought a new enthusiasm that bled back into my surfing. It’s a way of elongating our froth which, in turn, gives us life. Always have a little chuckle, or outer when it’s appropriate, when people say to you, ‘What are you fucking doing that shit for?’”

He says he looks now at the busy lineups as he flies past on his foil and thinks, ‘Look at all these people fighting over this strip of vertical wave.’ 

“Foiling we’ve literally got the whole ocean compared to a bit of vertical water. You fly past ‘em on teh foil and they’re sitting there looking at ya, going ‘Faaaark!’ They’re hanging around waiting for that vertical wave, and nothing against it, I love it, but it’s a limited resource. And when you start foiling, it’s unlimited.” 

I ask if he’s counting the days left on this gorgeous spinning ball. Does he ever think, man, I got ten more summers left surfing? 

“I never do the math. I dunno what the fuck’s going to happen. It might be a shock for me to do the math but I do think it takes away from what I like to do in the present.” 

Recently, Thomas bought a red cattle dog called Rumi, a mad little cunt, primitive as can be, filled with the joy of running, fighting, dominating. It’s changed his life.

 

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“I had to surrender my preferences to a new life all of a sudden. I didn’t know it was going to be a beautiful experience but fuck, two months in, I was thinking, ‘What the fuck have I done? This guy is a fucking unit!’ Or am I the unit? God, I’ve only got so much surf time left and I’ve gotta it to a dog! This is fucked!” Fucking hell, it was like picking up a sabre toothed toddler!” 

I tell him I try to live by the maxim, be like the dog. Leave the phone at home, chase the ball, wrestle, live not just for the present but for the exact moment

“Your heart fills up and he feels when you connect. And you learn to connect with him, you learn to be a leader. There’s not much talking, more signs and sounds. He’s trying to understand English and I’m trying to understand dog. Too many commands and he fucking wigs out, yes, fuck you, I’ll do what I want to do. He’s a lot of dog but he’s fucking awesome. Such a good spirit. Man, he can see through people. He’s feeling the whole time.” 

We talk dogs, we talk cats and what killing machines they are. 

“I want to get a kitten to see if he can stand his ground. It’ll be the biggest lesson for this guy. He annihilated a bandit the other night. I went, you cunt, you just brought in a big, fat bandicoot, a beautiful thing. Fuck mate, you need a cat to claw your fucken nose.” 

Thomas reflects on the time he had two cats and the time one of his daughters brought his attention to one of ‘em eating a rabbit head caught. 

As the cat tore the rabbit apart, she explained the process to her dad. 

“He goes for the brain first and he’s flicking the skull out of his teeth, then he goes for the eyes. She really checked it,” says Thomas. “Then they disembowel em through the anus, chew the neck off, then pull everything out through the arse so the entrails are sitting outside, then they go into the carcass and around it. But they’ll eat the brains first. It’s what all big lions and all the cats do.” 

The primitive impulse!

“It’s an imprint,” says Thomas. “It’s fucking awesome. I love it!” 

Update: Tom's out of hospital with stitches in head and sore neck.

The Australian Tom Carroll, who would win two world titles and three Pipe Masters, was a rare gem in that eighties manicure and bruises surf crowd, looking like a quizzical Botticelli nymph but equipped with the intellectual heft you’d expect from the son of a one of Australia’s greatest newspaper editors.

Earlier today, Tom, who is sixty-three, suffered a suspected spinal injury while surfing three-foot windblown waves at Sydney’s North Narrabeen.

Vividly described as “small and well-muscled (5′ 6″, 145 pounds), with huge energy-storing thighs” and “a power surfer with uncommon finesse” he was pictured holding his back before being placed on a spinal board and rushed to hozzy.

Tom Carroll is no stranger to injury. The tough little man has experienced, at different points in his career, infected fin gashes, a ruptured stomach, knee reconstruction, ankle ligament tears and various cuts and lower-back strains.

His most famous injury happened in 1987 when his surfboard fin visited his rectum during a shore break re-entry, or rear-entry as The Sun called it, at Nijima Beach in Japan.

Tom Carroll was warming up for a contest when he attempted a re-entry in the shorebreak. His board dug nose-first into the sand, and as he fell, legs akimbo, a fin lodged itself in his anal canal.

The injury resulted in a significant anal perforation. Thirteen stitches were required to close the wound, with eight of those stitches being internal.

After his injury, during subsequent surfing sessions, spray could often be seen spouting from the site of the injury, particularly during violent backhand hacks. This incident has been humorously referred to as giving him a “brand new arsehole” or an enlargement of the existing one.

More on Thomas’ latest injury as it unfurls or he jumps back into his DMs.

Update: Tom’s been patched up and is back in biz!

 

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Can Surfline convince all these lost souls to find the right spot for their abilities? I don’t hate them for trying!

Surfline killed Surfline Man. I can’t tell you the exact time of death, it was sometime last week while I was out surfing, probably.

But it happened all the same.

A reel posted on Instagram plunged a wooden stake through our hero’s hapless heart. Standing on the beach, I saw the incriminating clip and that’s when I knew.

Part of the new Surfline project aimed at improving lineup etiquette, the clip features a surfer named Dayton who can’t decide where to surf. It’s firing and he can go surf with his friends at the very best spot or he can pick an easier, more accessible break. In an effort to teach us to surf within our abilities, Dayton chooses the B-grade spot.

Surfline Man’s essential characteristic has always been his utter and complete lack of self-awareness.

No matter what happens to him out there, he’s never imagined that he has anything to learn. Surfline Man is an expert surfer. He just needs the perfect board, the ideal fins, and a seasonally appropriate, limited edition HydroFlask.

Throughout his many misadventures, and he’s had a few, Surfline Man has never realized just how much he is constantly and forever fucking up. Even though his problems have mostly been self-inflicted — paddling out at Ocean Beach on a board that was too short, surfing his precious midlength without a leash, to name just two — he has never gotten any smarter.

Last week Dayton realized that he should not follow his friends to the best wave in his area on the very best day. Instead, he should be honest and think about his surfing abilities in a realistic way. Dayton doesn’t run off to buy a new board or a fresh changing robe. He just, like, goes surfing at a spot where he might actually be able to catch a wave.

How self-aware. How enlightened.

The push from Surfline to educate the surfing community about lineup etiquette and instill wiser judgment is admirable. But there is a catch. It requires more surfers like Dayton — self-aware and realistic — than maladroit dreamers like Surfline Man. I’d love to believe in Surfline’s optimistic vision, but I’ve seen Surfline Man out there. I know exactly who he is.

One day last winter I was out surfing the top of Rincon. It was overhead, windy, and beautiful. It wasn’t the kind of surf that is trying to kill you or anything ridiculous like that — just a winter day in California.

I turned to go on one, and when I looked down, I saw a lost soul drifting around below me. Perched on a bright yellow, seven-foot Craigslist special, with his legs spread, he could barely paddle. Obviously, Craigslist wasn’t going to move anytime soon.

Yes, I could have gone, and most of you probably would have. And you know what? It probably would have been totally fine. But I have a deep aversion to getting hit by a loose Craigslist special. That thing’s definitely going to leave a mark..

Craigslist didn’t belong out there. That’s not because of some exclusive, gate-keeping idea that the ocean isn’t for everyone, which is the argument often leveled against lineup rules, localism, and hierarchy. Instead, it’s a reflection of the simple reality that the ocean isn’t for everyone on every single day.

I’ve walked away from spots that looked a little too unruly, and if you’re honest, you have, too. Sometimes the challenge is fun. Other times, it’s a lot of water up my nose. I like surfing a lot more than I like drowning. Despite a lifetime in the ocean, or maybe because of it, I’m actually really fucking scared of drowning.

The reality is, surfers who are in way over their heads show up to just about every known spot now. The internet tells them there’s surf and out they go. They have an uncanny knack for paddling out on wildly inappropriate boards on days they have no idea how to surf. None of this is super great for anyone in the lineup.

A while back, I used to surf with a guy who would yell, “Go to Mondos” whenever someone got in his way. Mondos is a spectacularly perfect beginners’ spot between Ventura and Santa Barbara. I doubt most of the people he was yelling at had any idea what he meant.

Also, it didn’t work. Even then, there were a seemingly endless supply of fools who needed to go to Mondos, but didn’t realize it.

Can Surfline convince all these lost souls to learn some etiquette and find the right spot for their abilities? I definitely don’t hate them for trying! In fact, I would love for more surfers to gain even an iota Dayton’s self-awareness. I would love for them to actually go to Mondos — and not just in the hope that it means more waves for me.

There’s a value to progression and to learning things like surfing step by step. You don’t buy a mountain bike and go drop Rampage lines on the very first day. I hope you don’t, anyway. Like, please don’t do this. I like you and I don’t want you to die.

If you have ever learned a thing from the ground up — surfing, music, riding a bike — you know there is satisfaction in accumulating skill over time. I’m still working on the “write a decent sentence” thing, for example.

Another day, another apocalyptic crowd.

“You just have to be an asshole to get a wave out here,” my friend says. He’s not wrong. You can wait your turn, not burn anyone, and do all the right things — and you’ll have been super nice and a good person. But you’ll also probably go home without having ridden any waves.

Play the asshole or the asshole plays you. I’d like to move through this life without turning into the worst possible version of myself, but surfing doesn’t necessarily reward this way of thinking.

In a past life, I studied nuclear strategy which is a thoroughly depressing thing to study. I do not recommend it. The essential thing about nuclear weapons is that they can destroy the world many times over. This is all very chill and fine.

Suppose two countries sign a treaty agreeing to “no first use” of nuclear weapons. If both countries hold to the treaty, everyone wins and there’s no nuclear war. If one country cheats on the treaty, they blow up their enemy and they win. If both countries cheat, everyone loses and the world is destroyed. Cool story, bro.

What’s called the prisoner’s dilemma — where there is an incentive to cheat, but also where cheating means that everyone loses — also applies to stuff that has nothing to do with blowing up the world. In an anonymous lineup, so overcrowded as to be laughable, there are few incentives to follow the rules. Burn someone, and you’ll get a wave. Breaking the rules pays off. When everyone gets burned, though, no one has a good time.

Repeated interactions are one way to break the incentive to cheat. In a small circle of surfers who see one another day after day, there’s more reason to follow the rules. These people know you and they will punish you in various ways if you cause trouble. They may even start working together to turn a cheater into a pariah.

Without these relationships — call it a community — there’s less incentive to follow the rules. No punishment, no problems, brah.

Of course, following the rules might improve the situation for everyone. And that’s the hopeful perspective Surfline is bringing to their project. They want us all to have a good, safe time in the water. That’s the message at the end of their short video about our new bestie Dayton, who’s kinda cute if AI-generated men is your kink.

The disparate, selfish individuals who populate the lineup, the people how just want to have some fun and get a couple sick selfies on a Saturday — I don’t think rules or learning are really what’s on their minds when they show up at the beach. The effort to save our lineups from ourselves feels like too little, too late. Surfing is well and truly cursed.

We’ve met the enemy; the enemy is us.

And so, Surfline Man isn’t dead yet. The rumors of his death are entirely premature. He is totally still out there.

Right now, Surfline Man is pulling into the parking lot in his Sprinter with his new personalized Stanley cup in hand. HydroFlask, so yesterday! Bounding out of the car, he changes into his wetsuit under his favorite fuzzy changing robe and saunters down to the beach with his brand-new board tucked insouciantly under his arm.

Riding waves! It’s the best thing in the whole world!

And Surfline Man is not about to let even a hint of self-awareness ruin his day.