Gerry Lopez is a fan of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, to say the least. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
When it comes to legends of surfing, Gerry Lopez is right up there at the top of the heap. He is an icon. An explorer. A surfer who has influenced the entirety of the wave-riding world. He’s Mr. Pipeline.
Things have changed a lot since Gerry Lopez was traipsing around Indonesia in search of waves back in the ’70s. Crowds are thicker, access to waves is better, and surf forecasting has changed the game. Looking ahead, though, nothing will change the face of surfing quite like the onset of the wave pool, but Gerry Lopez is, as you’d expect, not freaking out.
“I think it’s the greatest,” he said when asked about Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch by CBS San Diego. “I think it’s a perfect wave that just happens to be in a pool.”
No one can deny that the waves at Kelly’s pool are objectively pretty perfect. Sure, they can object to the fact that they’re man-made or that they take away from one of the best parts of surfing, or that they’ll make the crowds worse, but if the naysayers were to see Kelly’s wave at a beach, you can be assured that they would be absolutely losing their minds. From a personal standpoint, I can see both sides: yes, wave pools crank out incredibly fun waves. But also yes, a wonderful part of surfing is that not every wave is perfect. If everything was amazing all the time, perfect would become the norm, making it no longer amazing because it’s just… normal.
“The fact that it’s in a pool makes it very consistent,” Lopez continued. “You kind of know what you’re going to get. It’s probably the last place I’m ever going to get tubed like I used to be, so I love it.”
