Clay Marzo surfs on a different level than pretty much anyone else. He looks at waves differently, thinks about surfing differently, and can just simply do things on a surfboard no one else can do. Those Clay Marzo hail Mary hacks? Yeah, no one else is doing them like him.
Clay is “one of the most unique and naturally gifted surfers I’ve ever witnessed throughout my career,” says filmmaker Adam Klevin, who’s been following him around with his camera since Marzo was 14. He’s so unique, he adds, that it’s tough to shoot other surfers at times. “Nobody has the kind of percentages he has.”
The irony here?
“He’s not even really surfing that great in his eyes,” Klevin comments about an early-December session. Still, he doesn’t think Clay’s ever stopped progressing — he “just gets better and better.”
And much of that probably goes back to what Clay Marzo looks for in a rippable wave, versus what most of us watch for. He’s regularly surfing in places where other people don’t really care to surf, making magic happen with novelty-like, yet often hairy waves like the one in his latest winter edit. But what does Clay say? “That’s kind of a nug!”
See more Clay Marzo on Shaun Swink’s YouTube channel
