Last time Laird Hamilton was out there relatively alone, he was snagging this Millennium Wave back in 2000. Photo: Tim McKenna
Surfing’s history includes any number of time periods where some seismic shift in culture, innovation and performance, changed the direction of the sport in some significant fashion. However, some of surfing’s greatest paradigm shifts have occurred not over the course of single year, or month, or even a day, but during a single session. In some cases, on only a handful of waves, during a certain tide change, or before the crowd and the wind picked up. Sessions that, at the time, might not have seemed all that extraordinary to the surfers participating, but whose influence rippled out from the lineup and touched us all, changing not only how we would surf ourselves, but how the sport itself would be perceived for years to come. Here, then, is a list of the top 10 most influential surf sessions of all time, a number of which explain how, and why, and even where you surfed this morning.
10. “Free Ride” Pipeline Session, 1976
During one particularly dynamic session at Pipeline, the aggressive backside attack of South Africa’s Shaun Tomson and Australian Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, brilliantly highlighted in the climactic closing sequence of the classic film Free Ride, was seen as heralding the arrival an entirely new era. But really, how many surfers ever ride a tube backside — or any other way, for that matter? Yet lots of surfers travel for waves, and that’s why this session is one of surf history’s most impactful. With help from the period’s surf magazines, and films like Free Ride, that single Pipeline session came to epitomize a new era in surf stardom, promptly taken advantage of by fledgling surfwear companies like Quiksilver, Billabong and Gotcha, each brand going all-in on surf celebrity, endorsement-based marketing. Thing is, they needed a constant stream of photos and films of their sponsored surfers to feature in ads. Proportionally, the surf magazines needed content — content they couldn’t afford to produce. So, beginning right around 1977, it was the surfwear companies that began underwriting surf trips, often to exotic new breaks around the world. Thus providing, along with their advertising support, a mutually-beneficial, bi-monthly source of imagery and inspiration that had surfers everywhere rushing to the passport office. In turn, introducing the sport to many new shores and different cultures around the world, helping to create a truly international sport. So next time you ride a wave on a surf trip, thank Shaun and Rabbit…and Pipeline.
9. Tow-in First Tracks, Backyard Sunset, 1992
Yes, that first motor-assisted session behind Buzzy Kerbox’s inflatable boat (happening, ironically, on the same day that an old-fashioned, “acoustic” big wave competition was being held a few miles down the coast at Waimea Bay) changed heavy-water surfing forever. And that’s great, for both the relatively tiny cadre of surfers who actually ride giant waves, and the many who enjoy watching them do their thing. But more than any other single session in surf history, Buzzy’s, Laird’s and Darrick Doerner’s tow-rope playtime at Backyard Sunset went further than entertainment. It would actually change surfer’s lives — the very lives of those who, over the years that followed, would be saved by safety teams and lifeguards utilizing Jet Skis to charge into the impact zone at fearsome breaks like Pipeline, Peahi, Maverick’s, Nazaré, Cortes Bank and pluck those in peril from a watery grave.
8. The Millennium Wave Session, Teahupo’o, 2000
Laird Hamilton’s boundary busting session on a monster day in Tahiti was remarkable in a number of ways. It completely redefined what was considered to be a rideable wave. It proved that ski-assist could be applied to more than just deep-water, outer reef waves, but also affectively employed at notorious, backless “slabs.” And the epic photo of his greatest ride that day graced the best-selling issue in SURFER magazine’s long history. All influences relevant to a fairly small surfing demographic. The more broad-reaching contribution was Laird’s use of a flotation vest, introducing the idea of safety protocol to a culture who, for decades previous, assiduously eschewed anything of the sort. All those surfers now wearing inflatable vests and helmets in heavy waves? The whole safety thing started on that day at Teahupo’o.
7. Tom Curren’s “Fireball Fish” Session, Sumatra, 1994
Let’s get something straight: the little 5’7”, shaped by Australian Tommy Peterson (R.I.P.), that the ever-eccentric Tom Curren chose to ride in 10-to 15-foot barrels at Bawa, Sumatra, during the production of a Rip Curl “The Search” video, was no Fish, but just a short, channel-bottomed, swallowtail thruster, with the wide point moved up a smidge. And to be honest, the board didn’t work all that well — just Tommy did. Yet, by putting down the 7’11” Dave Parmenter “Widowmaker” tri fin, and standard 7’2” Maurice Cole thruster he rode earlier in the session, and instead paddling out on the diminutive “Fireball,” Curren gave permission to surfers of every stamp and level of experience to forget about current surfboard trends, and simply ride what feels good. For proof of influence, see session number six.
6. Craig Anderson’s “Hypto Crypto” Session, Kandui, Indonesia, 2015
This contemporary echo of Curren’s 1995 Bawa session occurred on a seriously big day at the epic Mentawai break Kandui, when gamine Aussie Craig Anderson decided to give his 5’4”, Haydenshapes “Hypto Crypto” model a go in 15-foot-plus, grinding reef barrels. Quite successfully, it turned out, once he switched it from a quad to a three- fin set-up (and up until it was broken). Anderson only rode a handful of waves that day, but soon after scores of heavy wave surfers could be seen pushing the envelope on sub-six-foot equipment. And good for them. The most significant influence of Anderson’s “baby board” session, however, was how the idea of boards with flatter rocker, fuller outline and increased volume triggered a consciousness shift, spurring a number of leading brands to offer those same advantages in bigger boards designed for everyday waves — and for surfers who weighed more than 120 pounds.
5. Devon Howard’s Malibu Mid-Length Session.
It wasn’t just because Devon Howard is one of the most technically and stylishly advanced surfers in the world. It wasn’t just that the 7’2” tri-fin roundtail he was riding was being marketed by Channel Islands Surfboards, perhaps the most fiercely “progressive” brand in the world. And it wasn’t because the short video that dropped in 2020, shot with a drone, and featuring Howard seamlessly riding a three-foot Malibu wall from the top of First Point to the beach, was punctuated by any particularly dramatic moment. No, it’s the fact that Howard rode this wave in the exact manner 99 percent of all surfers do in their dreams, that made this 55-second clip so wildly influential — and beneficial to that same demographic of surfers who can now choose mid-length models from CI, Lost, Pyzel, Haydenshapes, JS Industries, Machado…et al.
When the first glimpse of Kelly’s wave in Lemoore California hit the internet, it turned the surf world at large on its ear. Photo: Kelly Slater Wave Co
4. Kelly Slater’s First Lemoore Session, 2015
Had they really created the “perfect wave” in the middle of California’s Central Valley farm country? Well, the fact that on the very first day it was ridden, the water was a brain-freezing 48 degrees might have some surfers arguing that point. What nobody argued about, however, was that by the time Kelly had ridden even halfway to the shallow end of the lake, the surfing world as we knew it had changed forever. All the shorebreak pools out there can boast of their “air” sections — “Kelly’s Wave” is the one that took the long-standing fantasy of man-made perfection, and made it real. So how much is a ticket to Abu Dhabi?
3. Caity Simmers’ Cape Verde Islands Barrel Session, 2024
During a sponsor’s surf trip to these Atlantic isles (see session #1), the diminutive, teenaged charger from Oceanside pulled off the greatest quantum leap in women’s surfing since the equally elven, whip-turning 15-year-old Linda Benson won the 1959 Makaha International Championships. Like Benson that year, Caity didn’t just surf “like a girl” in the waves on offer — she owned them. In this case, a way overhead but bottomless, sand-sucking tube, spinning down the point at just under closeout speed, in which, like a bantam fury, she pumped and drove her way through section after section. The barrel didn’t happen to Caity, Caity happened to it. And by doing so, she completely changed the collective male surfing population’s perception of women’s surfing. Generations of female surfers will undoubtedly thank Caity Simmers for this extraordinary session.
2. First Shot in the Shortboard Revolution Session, Honolua Bay, January, 1968
Put simply, Bob McTavish and Nat Young, armed with shorter, lighter, thinner “Plastic Machines,” both equipped with narrow, flexible “high aspect” fins designed by the supremely innovative George Greenough, paddled out on a beautiful six-to-eight-foot day at Maui’s Honolua Bay during one era, and paddled in during another. In the hours between, surfboard design and surfing performance hyper-evolved at the pace of every approaching set, rendering the existing standards of each obsolete with every tight, high-pocket speed run and arcing bottom turn. Truly, a session for the ages — including the one we’re in today.
Dick Metz, 1959, at Cape St. Francis, home of “the perfect wave” that doesn’t look so perfect. Photo: Dick Metz Archives
1. The Perfect Wave Session, Cape St. Francis, South Africa, 1964.
Who says influential has to be beneficial? Consider the 1966 documentary The Endless Summer. The most influential surf movie of all time, the film was never marketed as the search for the endless summer, but the search for the “perfect wave.” Yet by establishing its archetype with a completely contrived sequence set at South Africa’s Cape St. Francis, a session where, in truth, all the requisite conditions for perfection freakishly came together for less than an hour, director Bruce Brown fostered not inspiration, but a systemic, and very potent, restlessness.
“We figured it broke like this for 300 days of the year,” Brown, as narrator, intoned. “The water was 70 degrees, the prevailing wind straight offshore. A perfect wave, and perfect conditions.” No, no, no and no. But no matter — the damage had already been done. With this memorable session, and most powerfully, its last line of narration (“Think of the thousands of waves that went to waste, and the waves that are going to waste right now, at Cape St. Francis.”), generations of surfers would forever be unsatisfied with their day-to-day surfing experience.
Sorry if I ruined it for you.
