SURFER Interview with Rob Machado

Rob’s tuberiding skills have earned him a handful of victories over the years, including his second at Pipeline this past February, but scoring on surf trips is his top priority these days

And what brought them back to California? Eventually the political situation changed down there, too. Things got pretty weird in the ’70s with the Australian government, so they decided to come back. The funny thing is my parents were seriously debating whether to live in the mountains or on the beach. My dad was a ski instructor at one point, and he had a little piece of land up in the mountains, they loved both, and they were kind of on the fence until my grandparents told them to come check this place [Cardiff] out. They’d just moved down here. So, now imagine this place in the late ’70s. It was pretty cool, too. And once they checked it out that was it. They posted up. They decided right then this is where they wanted their kids to grow up.

You were pretty close to becoming a downhiller. I know. My legs would be huge. I would have had a serious set of Tommy Carroll thighs.

So late ’70s/early ’80s, around Cardiff Reef and Swamis, that whole scene, there were a lot of style bandits flowing around here. Was style always a concern of yours? When I was growing up there was no bigger compliment than someone saying you have good style. You had to flow or you were an outcast.

Who were you looking to for inspiration? By the time I was really getting into surfing it was all about Curren and Occy. They were the guys breaking through, but they also had style. It was the early ’80s, and when you look at what they were riding, those thick, flat, glider things with big blocky tails, it’s no wonder they were just flowing like crazy. Those guys were my first big influences. I remember watching Occy at Burleigh Heads in Beyond Blazing Boards; he was doing these pumps, just going down the line, and I was so stoked on how high he was flying in the pocket. I’d pause the tape on that part just to see how high he actually got. Plus, there was still plenty of footage of guys like Gerry Lopez and Ronny Burns at Pipe, and grace under pressure was what it was all about.

Were you a little punk as a kid? Nah, not really. I wasn’t running around going wild. I couldn’t ditch school, because my dad was a contractor, and he was just driving around town all day. He caught my brother plenty of times so I knew he’d find me. I wasn’t the punk kid at all. School was really important, my mom was adamant about that. The cool thing was if you proved you had some promise the people at my school were pretty accommodating. We had some good athletes there, like [1989 French Open tennis champion] Michael Chang, he went to my high school and he had plenty of time to train. By my senior year, I had Surf P.E. and Surf Class back-to-back in the morning, so I was getting two sessions in before even being in class. But even when I did start missing school for contests I’d come back with my work done. That was hard, but it was important for me to show that I was doing something and not just messing around. The school cracked down on you if you didn’t. You lost those privileges if you let things slide.

Was Seaside Reef the wave you grew up on? I didn’t really make it down to Seaside until I was about 14. We lived up by Swami’s so I was surfing all around there first. There are hundreds of little waves in the stretch between here and there. I remember wandering a bit farther south once and finding my own peak. It became my own little wave. Like, today there’d be little waves out there that look like 1-foot Macaronis, y’know? You can actually rip it. The farther I came down this way [toward Cardiff and Seaside], the more of those little spots I found. Most of them close out over 3 feet, but they’re perfect when it’s small. Eventually I got rides to Seaside and that became my go-to spot. When I was 14 I entered the Bud Tour event they had here and ended up making the final, and I was pretty hooked.

You already had a significant amount of trophies by that time, didn’t you? Well, that’s only because I was doing a contest every single weekend, and they were pretty much handing them out. It got out of control, really, because I was in like five different organizations. I actually burned out because my friends kept telling me how good the waves were at home on weekends when I was gone. After I made that final I decided pull way back.