“I’m going to do whatever it takes no matter what’s going on, I’m going to make sure I show up and try hard and put everything I can into it.”
Zeke Lau is a brand new dad. It’s fair to say that life-changing role supersedes the handful of life-changing curveballs he’s been thrown in the recent past. Qualification. Relegation. Re-qualification. Entering the 2023 Championship Tour without the guarantee of a renewed contract from his longtime sponsor, Quiksilver. And now he’s confronting the possibility of missing the mid-year cut for the second time and another slate of Challenger Series events.
This year’s CT slate started rough for Lau, including an interference at Sunset that, in hindsight, likely played a huge role in placing him on the potential chopping block again. His daughter was born just a couple weeks later right before the opening round of the Meo Rip Curl Pro Portugal, and he prepared himself to sit out the event if she wasn’t born before the contest. Instead, Zeke Lau became a father the day before his first heat at Supertubos. He had just enough time to welcome his new daughter into the world and get on a flight to Portugal less than 20 hours later, throwing on a jersey and hopping into the water with nearly no downtime. It sounds exhausting.
But the intensity we all see during heats shouldn’t fool you. Lau is surprisingly calm about it all. He’s easy to talk to, upbeat, and positive. He’s understandably excited about fatherhood, for one. He has a new sponsor, AVVA, which came together serendipitously while surfing at home with longtime friend and AVVA founder, Kekoa Cazimero. And it turns out the change was more than just putting a new sticker on his boards. It was a chance at a refreshed approach to his career and his ambitions on tour.
What’s that old cliché? It’s not how many times you get knocked down that count, it’s how many times you get back up… But a conversation with Zeke Lau turns into an hour-long reminder of that idea. It’s one he carries with him.
I heard you’re on dad duty right now.
I just pretty much just got off that duty. Yeah. Put the little one down. Brand new dad. Brand new and figuring it out.
What’s that like? I’m guessing there’s a new perspective on life and your career being a father now.
You know, every year changes. And everything changes with what I’m doing, how I’m feeling, how I’m doing things. And I don’t like to do things the same for long periods of time. Like, I might be surfing — I have been my whole life — but the way I do it is different every year, maybe every month, always changing and adapting to life circumstances and stuff. When I was growing up, that’s all I had to care about (surfing). Nothing else was really on my mind, and I didn’t have other goals besides the goals I had in surfing. So obviously I’m all in. I’m super competitive naturally. And I feel like that’s just what I’ve been putting out up until now. Obviously, my life’s changing now. And it just so happened when I got married and I started to think about life outside of the whole competitive surfing thing, COVID happened. I wasn’t on tour and a lot of things have changed. So I think if there’s a new perspective, or this new image of me, it’s just because everything is new, I’m back on tour, and I’m doing the things that I love still, but I also have a lot more on my plate. Since the last time I was on tour in 2019, my life has changed so much. So I’m creating the life I’ve always wanted — to be in a position where I can serve and raise my family and live in Hawaii. Yeah. It takes some adjusting, but it’s been great.
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I’m curious, how much of that’s been shaped by the fact that professionally, you’ve qualified, re-qualified, and had to do it in different ways to keep pursuing competitive surfing. How much has the roller coaster shaped that perspective?
Oh, 100 percent. The way that things have unfolded change the way I’m viewing everything. But I still have the same goals. I still want to do the same things. But, you know, along the way, there are these lessons and these challenges. For me those things are like tests, like messages from the universe telling me how to get better. So I use those experiences to try and better myself.
I’m still on tour, I’m still doing it. It’s taking me some adjusting to be able to balance everything in my life, which may make it harder for me to get the results that I want. But for me, as long as I’m still on tour, I’m still showing up. If I keep doing that, the results will come. I’m just learning how to keep up with everything else in my life and also grow competitively and grow my surfing. I still feel like I’m getting way better at surfing whether the results show it or not. And that’s all that matters for me. Obviously, I want to win the world title. And that’s why I still work so hard to keep fighting for it. Whereas I feel like a lot of people — the falling on and off tour just really discourages them. They don’t want to show up, like ‘I can’t do the QS anymore.’ They just refuse to do it. And for me, the whole fear of, ‘Oh, I gotta go back to the QS and do it all over again,’ that’s not really a big deal for me.
Was there ever a point for you where it didn’t feel like that? Like after 2019? And the Challenger Series wasn’t even a thing at that point. And you go through that season and come up short in the end, versus last year, for example, at that midway point of the season and the cut hits and you’re going straight into the Challenger Series. How different were those two experiences?
The first time it happened, just like anything else, you’re in shock. You’re like, ‘Oh, my God. This is heavy. It took me five, or six years to qualify and get myself on tour. Now I’m on tour for three years and I fall off?’ At that moment, you’re like, it’s over. ‘I don’t have another five years in me on the QS.’
Did you really believe that at that time?
It’s a question, you know? Go back on the QS and never be back here again? That’s kind of scary. And everything just shattered. One bad year and everything’s just gonna go down the drain. You’ve got all those thoughts. And I think that’s where the growing starts. Because I’m not some young kid that’s trying to qualify anymore. I’m looking at it like, is this the end or is this just a new chapter that I’m gonna have to create? Is my story another comeback?
I feel like a lot of surfers on tour — when they’re faced with having to do it all over again — it’s just so discouraging. The whole doubt thing really just kills the confidence and then you’re having to go back and do the QS, where maybe a lot of guys just don’t like doing the QS. So they just really hate it and it wears on them. But I was like, ‘Well, I’ve done so much, let’s go do it again.’ And just get over the whole ego thing. Getting rid of that hurts so bad at first. You’re like, ‘Wow, I’m one of those guys bouncing on and off tour.’ But 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. Like, ‘Holy shit, this guy keeps coming back?’
Do you have thoughts on whether or not the current system is more or less equitable?
It’s crazy. When you look on tour, at the pinnacle of our sport competitively, there are guys rocking no sticker at the highest level. So that tells you how someone on the QS is supposed to be able to figure it out. How are they supposed to find the support when the guys at the top level can struggle to find support?
“I’m creating the life I’ve always wanted — to be in a position where I can serve and raise my family and live in Hawaii.”
Speaking of, you just announced a sponsor change to AVVA. And I know that’s a big change for you because you were with Quiksilver for a really long time.
Yeah, I was with Quiksilver since 2015. I split with Volcom at the beginning of 2014. So I went a little bit sticker-less for maybe half a year. In the negotiation with Quiksilver, I just told them all I wanted to do was qualify and they supported it. I’m forever grateful to them for that.
Last year, I obviously fell off the tour at the halfway cut. I knew my contract was up. So I knew I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not the best thing.’ I knew the Challenger Series ends in October and so did my contract. So I felt like a lot was riding on if I was on tour or not. So my whole thing was that I needed to make sure I’m back on tour so I could secure my contract. In the back of my head, I’m thinking I should be pretty good. And then if I qualify at the end of the year, I did my job, you know? But then came the end of the year, we’re going back to renegotiate and it was just a tough time with the company. They have this whole buyout thing happening, budgets are frozen, and they aren’t going to offer me a contract for 2023. But they say, ‘Hold on for us. And we’ll try and make it work.’
They didn’t tell me to take the sticker off and leave but they also weren’t really giving me a contract for the following year, saying hopefully in 2024 they’re going to be able to take care of me. That just left me like, what the hell is going on? My wife’s pregnant. I had a helluva year falling off tour. And when the year ends I barely get back on and then I don’t know if I’m gonna have a contract next year. I don’t know if I should go shop around for another contract. But I just kept rocking the sticker. They were there for me at a time in my career when I really needed them and they came in clutch for me. So I owed it to them to do things the right way and try and work it out.
And then I just have shockers. I don’t know, besides the Eddie, nothing was going well for me. And it was just the weirdest thing ever. I just felt like I couldn’t focus. Things weren’t clicking at all. So after the whole Sunset thing happened, I’m pretty freaked out. I don’t know what’s going on. At that point, I just started thinking all this uncertainty everywhere else outside of my life is just too crazy. And then I gotta show up and try and beat the best guys in the world, block all of it out, and surf at the highest level while not really having that support system.
So, I surf with (AVVA Founder) Kekoa (Cazimero) on the daily. He’s one of my boys. We live close together, and we surf all the same spots, especially in the wintertime. So we’re surfing one day and I kind of just opened up to him about everything. I told him where everything was with me. And that’s pretty much where this whole thing kicked off — just me and him having a session, opening up to him with what was going on in my life. And he kind of couldn’t believe it. He was baffled. And then he was just like, ‘Let me see what I can do.’ All of the sudden, he just starts throwing everything together and saying he’s gonna pick me up, he’s gonna take care of me.
I have to imagine that’s probably a breath of fresh air after what sounds like a roller coaster. What is that, four months of not knowing how you’re going to pay your bills? With a new kid on the way?
I had to just figure 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. And it was awesome because Kekoa has always said, ‘Hey, once I get this thing going and once my company is up and running, I’m telling you I’m gonna make you an offer.’
He’s someone that thinks so positively. I don’t know how else to say this, he’s like a master at manifesting things in his life. He’ll spark ideas and spark things that kind of don’t seem like they’re real. And here we are sitting out there, it didn’t break for like an hour, and we just have a conversation as organic as it was. I feel like the surf industry needs stuff like that more than ever right now.
You’re pretty damn resilient. And you seem to get that about yourself. Like nothing’s really gonna knock you down.
I think it’s only because I’ve had to be. 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 Kekoa, 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.
“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. Like, ‘Holy shit, this guy’s still coming back?'” Photo: Sloane//WSL
