When Zeke Lau was a kid, his dad wouldn’t let him grow out his hair. “Everybody had long hair,” says Zeke. “He wanted me to be different.” Then Zeke made a deal with his dad. If he won nationals, he could grow out his hair. After a few years, he eventually did win. But by then the buzzed head thing had already stuck. It was part of his identity. So too is his reputation for speaking softly but being a ruthless competitor.
Zeke Lau joins the field in 2017 as one of the handful of World Championship Tour rookies. His ascension to the highest level of competitive surfing is something not a single person would have questioned. It was only a matter of time. But the way he qualified during the 2016 Pipe Masters was especially poetic. Friend and Quiksilver teammate Kanoa Igarashi needed to make the semis to double qualify and propel Zeke to qualification. Surfing against Jordy Smith, that was a tall order. With a 9.93 and an 8 to back it up, whistles from the Quiksilver house could be heard from across the beach as Zeke nervously waited for time on the clock to run out. When it finally did, that was it. Zeke was on tour.
For the native Hawaiian, it’s especially sweet. As the video above states, native Hawaiians have a deeper connection to surfing than most due to its ancestry and origins.
So get acquainted with the new guy on tour who’s already making a convincing case for rookie of the year.
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