It wasn’t long ago that it seemed like everyone and their mother was riding surfboards of the heavily-rockered, long, narrow, thin variety thanks in part to the performances of the Momentum Generation in Taylor Steele flicks. Thankfully, those times are long gone – the board design myopia, that is, not Steele’s films. And now, it ain’t uncommon to paddle out anywhere from the Lane to Windansea and find the lineup awash with single fins, asymmetricals, twins, and more experimental shapes.
Everything old is new again, they say, which is precisely why Mason Ho paddling out close to home on a 6’9″ seems strange by present-day standards but likely wouldn’t have been that weird, say, thirty years ago. Mase’s standard shortboard these days is a 5’8″ so we’re talking a good thirteen inches longer than what he’d normally ride on a head-high day. But, consider that Kelly Slater (also diminutive in stature) won the inaugural Quiksilver Pro G-Land in 1995 on a 6’6″ mini-gun. Might we soon see a return to the mid-90s?
