Ned Hart’s knocking on the door of what most parts of the world consider adulthood. It’s part of the wow factor that’s come with watching the “kid” we’ve been calling Overhead Ned. He arrived on the big wave scene as just that, practically a kid…who happens to thrive in scenarios most of us want nothing to do with. Ever.
But that’s just a surface-level assessment of it all because Ned Hart will be an adult soon and the surf world will be watching him do the unthinkable without referring to him as a grom. What’s actually most exciting about young Ned Hart’s future, in my opinion, is that he’s still crossing a ton of firsts off his list, still progressing, still building on his skillset, and still tracking down experiences to hone it all. In other words, we’ve just scratched the surface of Ned Hart’s potential.
“He’s always chased big barrels, right from the start out at his local wave at Supertubes, he just loved it. It’s hard to explain where it came from,” Hart’s mom, Adele, told The Inertia in 2022. At that time, Hart had just surfed Teahupo’o for the first time.
In Uncharted, a new edit from the young Aussie, he’s earning his stripes back home with some guidance.
“His surfing’s really good for his age,” says Zac Haynes, who confirms Hart is a, “bloody good kid with a good head on his shoulders.” He also backs up the idea that we’ve only watched him scratch the surface so far, as he’s still “…learning fast and learning on the fly too, so he hasn’t really been taught much.”
By the end of Uncharted we see Ned log a lesson in getting worked: a two-wave hold down at The Right.
“I got sucked over, got destroyed, lost my booties, gloves,” he says. “Pulled my vest, didn’t go anywhere. Pulled my second one, still didn’t really go anywhere. Pulled my third and finally I lifted off the bottom. I came up and the third wave landed pretty much back on my head.”
He’s earning his stripes, that’s for sure.
