Zeke Lau’s one big result away from landing a spot back on the Championship Tour. Even sitting at 39th on the Challenger Series leaderboard with two events to go, the guy’s proven more than once that as long as he’s within striking distance of re-qualification, he’ll figure out a way to make it happen.
Funny enough, Lau told us back in April that was kind of his approach to a lot of things in his career and life: just figure it out. He started the year, for example, without the guarantee of a contract extension from his longtime sponsor, Quiksilver. The threat of losing that support was the exact thing that pushed him to see through re-qualifying for the Tour as the 2022 Challenger Series was winding down. He surfed the Eddie more or less sponsor-less. He started the 2023 CT season without a contract but kept the sticker on his board in good faith. He prepared himself to become a father in the midst of all that uncertainty. And in the end, even facing relegation when the 2023 mid-year cut came along, he still landed himself a title sponsorship with the growing AVVA brand. He figured it out.
“I just have to figure out if I really want to do this and I’ll find a way every time. That’s been my whole mindset,” he told The Inertia at the time. “Trust me, there are days I wake up, and I’m just like, ‘It’s over. There’s no way I can come back from this.’ But when I talked to (AVVA Founder, Kekoa Cazimer)o, he told me, ‘We’ll support you with anything you want to do.’ I’ve never really had a company tell me that. That gives me a different sense of security.”
Seeing as how he’s competed on a full slate of Challenger Series events since, it’s a safe guess that Lau does, in fact, still want to do this. But you can’t miss the beautiful irony of dropping a new edit, all with that still-new sticker on his board, and naming it Jaded. The man has scratched and clawed to get onto the CT through QS points. He fell off when getting back on tour meant going right back to the QS grind. When the WSL changed the formula and set up a Challenger Series, he put his head down and used that avenue to get back on tour. Twice.
“For me, I look at it in hindsight and say if I just keep showing up, and I keep re-qualifying, that’s gonna break some spirits,” he explained. “Like, ‘Holy shit, this guy keeps coming back?’”
So if anybody has reason to be jaded by the grind of professional surfing, it’s Zeke Lau. But it’s really fun watching him come back anyway. He always figures it out.
