When it comes to the person shaping your surfboard, it is very helpful to know that they can surf well. Ideally, they can surf better than you can, but that’s not always the case. A good surfer knows the ins and outs of surfboard design and what makes what do what. A good surfer knows what the wave is going to do a second or two before it does it. A good surfer spends their life thinking about waves, accidentally visualizing—which, of course, has been proven to help performance.
That’s right: thinking about surfing better can actually make you surf better. Daniel “Tomo” Thomson, shaper extraordinaire, surfs very, very well. He also spends an inordinate amount of time merely thinking about waves, but he’s thinking about them in a different way than most. Tomo is thinking about them in a deeper way than the average person, and that’s why his boards are what they are. That’s also why he surfs so well.
If you have been in California at any point over the last few days, you probably scored. Tomo did. He flew into L.A. on Sunday night, surfed until Wednesday, only stopping for eating and sleeping, then got back on a plane on Thursday morning, right as the first solid swell of the winter started to back off. He rode his Hydronaut, which is his magic surfboard, and he is a man who knows surfboards.
