We Shouldn't Be Friends

Great surfing, like we just watched at the WSL CT Fiji Pro, can seem like magic to the rest of us. What are they DOING out there? All that timing, power and flow, coloured by small yet unmistakable flashes of individual style — it doesn’t come out of nowhere.

Matt Grainger, Manly surf school and Surfers Gym owner and high end pro coach, has been fascinated by this craziness pretty much all his extensive surfing life. Here he joins Hannah and Nick for a deep dive into the skills that define elite surfers — and how he helps the groms along that path. 

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The better half of the WSBF team is on site at what might prove to be the CT event of the year. But there’s so much more to Teahupo’o than terrifying competitive angst and the most Instagram-worthy barrels in human history. This place has been seducing people for a millennium or more. Following an afternoon on the pre-contest beers, Hannah tortures Nick with some lyrical descriptions of the South Pacific vibe, the way the ocean draws off the reef, the little fishies darting about the lineup, and gives us all some insight into how the surfers are gathering themselves for what lies ahead.

The better half of the WSBF team is on site at what might prove to be the CT event of the year. But there’s so much more to Teahupo’o than terrifying competitive angst and the most Instagram-worthy barrels in human history. This place has been seducing people for a millennium or more. Following an afternoon on the pre-contest beers, Hannah tortures Nick with some lyrical descriptions of the South Pacific vibe, the way the ocean draws off the reef, the little fishies darting about the lineup, and gives us all some insight into how the surfers are gathering themselves for what lies ahead.

“Sorry, Mr Pipeline!” Imagine surfing at a psychotically high level for 50 years, then being run over in a two foot beachie by an unsteady grommet. This is what happened to Tom Carroll, just a couple of days before Nick and Hannah put him on the spot to follow up Shane Dorian’s awesome take on ageing. What lessons do you learn in your mid-60s from stuff like this? What do you give up, and what do you gain? Is there some sort of weird trick involved in surfing extremely well into the last third of your life, or is it just a crapshoot? And possibly more important: what’s a Pro Turn, 2026-style, and can Tom still do one?

There’s never been a time quite like this one. Since Surfing World published issue 428, “Shark Country”, there’s been three shark fatalities around the nation and one very seriously injured swimmer at a Sydney metro beach. Drones are being dispensed to boardriders clubs, shark bite kits are common sightings on coastal trails, and surfers — including Hannah and Nick — are being chased out of formerly safe waters on a daily basis. There’s a lot of shared concern out there. In this episode we get into some of what we’ve learned since the magazine hit the streets, and try to answer some smart questions from the readership.