The popular Hawaiian and the Australian prodigy swarm to attack now-famous swell at once-famous left…
In holiday seasons of yore, surfers would quack and swarm all over Padang Padang, a hollow lefthander on Bali’s Bukit Peninsula, which you can find just north of Uluwatu.
And, then, like all things fashion, it disappeared into the history books, left to whomever wasn’t nose-picking or practising shuv-its at the more-popular Keramas or Canggu. A lovely beach, by the way, and very quiet at night except for the sound of locals urinating onto the trees.
Recently, a large south swell lit up the reefs along the Bukit with waves that hadn’t been seen for a couple of decades. And, Padang, with its photogenic backlit tubes and Rip Curl Padang Cup was there to upstage Keramas and so forth.
This edit by the fantastically named Sidney Polansk is two-and-a-bit minutes of Mason Ho, Jack Robinson and Chris Ward, and others, although it’s these three surfers who make everyone else seem unimportant.
A sort of related quote from Mason re: surfing heats.
“You could liken it to a cooking show. The chefs have the hour to cook their meal with the certain materials. We go out in the water and our boards are our knives. And it is like painting. You paint whatever you want and then you show it to the judges. When I try to explain to my dad about the art on my boards, he always tells me not to forget the black pin-ines. It’s an analogy for surfing heats. Get arty but don’t forget the basic and fundamental things.”