Tom Carroll is the Paul McCartney of Pipeline. The Robert Plant or the Jimi Hendrix, if you will. If you don’t agree, maybe the video above will change your mind. Like Tom, the aforementioned musicians are absolute legends of their trade. They are pioneers of a movement that revolutionized both our music and our culture. Similarly, Tom Carroll (along with several others) is a legend of Pipeline. He has influenced, and will continue to influence, generations of surfers to come. With his brilliant ingenuity and giant cojones, Tom Carroll revolutionized the way people surf Pipe.
Pipeline is surely a place for insane barrels, which Tom Carroll is no stranger to, but holy shit – some of the turns he executed in the ’80s and ’90s were easily some of the most insane maneuvers Pipe has ever seen. I’m curious to know how radical maneuvers like “The Snap” would be rewarded in the 2014 Pipe Masters. How well would the Tom Carroll of the ’80s and ’90s do in the Pipe Masters of today? There are certainly a handful of people (Slater, Fanning, Medina and Florence, to name a few) that are capable of tens with their eyes closed, but you cannot deny Tom’s prowess in his heyday. Tom was getting perfect tens at Pipe before Florence and Medina were even born. It would be silly for me to postulate that Carroll would, without a doubt, win a Pipe Masters, but I would bet my bottom dollar he would make semis, if not a final, with surfing like this. What do you think?
