The SURFER Magazine Interview: Fred Patacchia

So tell me about the motivation level. Are you as pumped up about surfing today as ever?
Actually no. [Laughs] I still love it when it’s good, that’s when I’m on it. But I’m not as easy to motivate when it’s bad. It’s funny too, because I have other distractions now that help me stay motivated. I started liking golf a lot even though I swore I’d never do it. I blame Kelly pretty much for that. I thought it was kind of a gimmicky little game, but it really does mess with your mind and helps with your concentration. You’re training your mind not to buckle under pressure in certain situations. A 3-foot putt can make you feel like there are five minutes left in a heat and you need an 8. I never thought that when I was younger but now I’ve seen the light.

So how do you avoid just going through the motions when you’re out there on the tour? Because it seems like there’s something palpable with they guys who are really amped, and it translates into results. Do you have to monitor your motivation level?
In a way, yeah, I think, but at the same time you need to have it come naturally. You can’t force yourself to become motivated and you can only train and surf and work hard to a certain extent. If you do something too much, you get bored with it and become less motivated.

It seems pretty easy to get jaded when you live on the dream tour and go to the Mentawais for photo trips in your free time.
But the good waves are what motivate me now. Trust me, I’m not jaded by them at all. Seeing killer waves going off, left or right, just peeling, barreling, I start going crazy. Even just some fun surf where I think I could have busted a huge air, I start going crazy. When you’re a kid, just getting a new board can get you stoked, but y’know, my garage is full of new boards now, so that doesn’t work anymore. It’s all about the waves. But my priorities have changed a bit, too. When I was a kid all I wanted to do was leave. Now I love coming home. I love hanging with my friends, going to our little secret spots. It’s funny because my dad gets pretty heated when I miss a good Pipe swell. But when Pipe is good, sometimes I’ll go down to a couple little secret spots with my friends and I’ll paddle out and not even catch a wave, just hang out and chat with everyone, see how they’re doing. That’s what grounds you. Things that you or the guys at Quiksilver wouldn’t say to my face, those guys will say. Like when I came back from Fiji, my buddy came up and said, “What the f--- are you doing? You only needed a 6.8; how did you not get a 6.8?” And I’ve got to take it under consideration. Someone else you’d just be like, “F--- off, I don’t know you. Who are you to tell me how to surf my heat?”