So as this isn’t a traditional surf mag, why don’t you introduce yourself and let the people know some of the things that make Tom Carroll the legend that he is…
Ha! Ok. I’m 59 years old. Started surfing when I was 7. I became a Pro Junior Champion when I was 15 years of age. That catapulted me to competing on the world tour and I became a world champion when I was 22 and 23, consecutively. I then lost my world title to Tom Curren.
Bloody Curren haha…
Yeah. Curren turned into quite a force. He was already a world champion in the amateurs. I had to kind of stamp my ground before he came in. I also watched Occy come on and I thought “these guys are amazing surfers, I’m going to learn a lot from these guys, but I want to nail it as much as I can.” I was already very competitive by nature, just through the crew I grew up with. I got myself nine years of consecutive Top 5 places and surfed the tour for 14 years, stepped off and started working with Quiksilver a little more closely. They were my sponsor… still are. They sponsored me from 14 years of age, so it’s been a long time.
That’s a journey isn’t it? 45 years.
It’s been an incredible relationship yeah. But throughout those years I had all those great experiences of growing up through the development of surfing as a professional sport and all the kinda weird angles it took. Back then there were two strains of thought… soul surfer or competitor, and trying to figure that out through the ‘90s, it was pretty interesting but I was always absolutely given to riding a wave in any way, shape or form. Whether it be body surfing, body boarding, surfing.
Certainly back then it was “You’re a shortboarder, you’re not going to do anything else…”
Yeah. You couldn’t longboard. Like a longboarder would get beat up and told to go in at my local break. Body boarders too. It was really heavy. I never really got it because I liked the idea of just riding a wave, and what it gave me. It was
