SURFER Interview with Rob Machado

Machado’s athletic talents don’t stop at the water’s edge. His groovy exterior veils the inner-jock hiding inside. The term “wicked backhand snap” applies to his ping-pong game as well as his surfing.

Did you feel like you were playing catch-up? Oh yeah. I mean, all those guys had full-on quivers and knew the drill. I would show up with a couple of boards and be like, “Oh, wow. OK, that’s what you do?” They’d just jump in the water and paddle out at 10-foot Pipe and be totally cool with it. It’s funny, because I look back now and think about how strange that era was for surfing. Ninety-percent of the contests were in waves under head-high. Even the ’CT contests. So up to that point when I got to Pipeline, my whole career—from the NSSA and the ’QS, even the WCT—it was all in total drivel. Big-wave surfing wasn’t really in the spotlight. I think Maverick’s just made the magazine for the first time that year. Beyond Hawaii, big-wave surfing just wasn’t there

And the whole notion of the “dream tour”... That was still a total dream.

Well you couldn’t have picked a better crew to be around for a crash course in big waves. Especially since I never jump into things. I sit back and calculate the risks. Shane-O is the total opposite. You watch a guy like him for a while and you kind of absorb something.

So was that it? Problem solved? Not overnight or anything. One year I finally went in early October and stayed all the way through January. I think it was 1994. That was my first real North Shore pilgrimage. Every day I was being pushed a little further out of my comfort zone. I remember distinctly walking down the beach by Ross Williams’ house and all I could see was whitewater to the horizon. Those guys just jumped right in and paddled out like it was nothing. You do that a couple times and pretty soon you’re going places that you thought for sure you would never go. When I first got there I was afraid to surf Pipe when it was like 6 to 8 feet. Meanwhile Shane was pulling into closeouts at Backdoor and Cheese was doing the same at giant Off The Wall; I was like, “Uh, is that what I’m supposed to be doing?”

How long did it take you to feel comfortable? I think by the end of that season I’d come a long way. Eventually you forget you’re scared. I remember paddling out at Sunset with Cheese, and he loved to sit on that deep peak, catch the north ones that would push you through into the west bowl. I figured I’d just stick to him like glue. I’m thinking, “It’s cool. He totally knows what he’s doing out here.” The next thing I know this big set comes, a full west set, it seriously looks like a mountain, y’know, and I’m looking at Cheese and he’s got this little grin on his face, like he didn’t even care. I remember scratching over these 10- to 12-foot lefts while this mountain just annihilated him. I thought there’s no way he’s going to survive that. I was tripping out. There went my wingman.

Close friends of Rob Machado say his surfing has steadily improved in recent years. Ask them how, and they'll tell you he's even smoother.

How important was it for you to gain the respect of guys like that? That was everything. It didn’t matter how I did in the contests. I mean, I remember coming in from a heat at Pipe where I finally went out there and caught a big one. For the boys to be like, “How was that wave that you went on?” I mean, that was huge. When you’re in that kind of environment, where everyone is pushing like that, that kind of acknowledgement is as good as it gets.

The very next year at thick, ugly, Gnaraloo, you won the Billabong Challenge. That wasn’t a rated event, but looking back, with the crew that was there, how does that win stack up against all your others? That’s a big highlight for sure. That’s the only event I ever won in Australia. I never really did well there. The crew of guys that were in it, and the wave, that was kind of the first step where people were like, “Wow. That wave is...it’s overhead...and it’s slabbing. And wait a sec...he won?”