Nothing more stately or gorgeous.
A few weeks back, I got into some hot surfing water. The J-Bay Open had just ended with a stunning Connor O’Leary victory right before David Lee Scales right I came together for our weekly chat, you see. Now, I am very much a fan of the Australian screwfoot. He is not shy around the microphone, is not afraid to charge and can really belt an end section. My problem, minor, was that I found his surfing monotonous on J-Bay’s forever long rights and concluded that all backhand surfing might be fun to do but is crap to watch, competitively.
Boring and ugly.
As you can imagine, many folk found my thinking ill-informed/sacrilegious but vigorously defended…. until one Clifton James Hobgood called in with a stinging rebuke.
CJ, as he’s more commonly known, is a former surfing champion and also man of letters. He not only argued that backside surfing is gorgeous, but the highest form of the surfing art, and pointed to Mark Occhilupo’s bottom turn:
And the hands-free barrel (as performed by Andy Irons here):
The reasoning was undeniable and I immediately felt shame and regret, trying to twist the conversation back to Joe Turpel’s participation Emmy.
But do you agree with CJ? Is back-to-wave surfing the peak form of the art?
Listen to him further extrapolate here.