Like the rest of the surf world, I first met Grant “Twiggy” Baker almost exactly eight years ago. He was the Billabong sales rep from Durban who’d gotten enough votes online to snag a wildcard slot into the Maverick’s contest. (“Everyone in
Santa Cruz was against each other, I had a whole country voting for me.”) He won the event in crazy-big, perfect surf on what turned out to be an 8’10” Randy Cone gun.
Since then, you’ve seen his exploits. Multiple XXL-winning waves. Crazy discoveries in South Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and beyond. A surfer’s surfer, always putting himself in the biggest and best waves … More
www.stokednews.com
More than Maverick’s, more than Kelly Slater, more than barrels and way more than alley-oops, sharks are what separate surfing from every other sport. They lurk, those morbid creeps, under blankets of ocean and can end a man’s life in the blink of a bull shark’s distant eye. It’s what makes surfing unique. In tennis, Rafael Nadal mustn’t worry about getting mauled by a black bear as he serves. In basketball, Kobe Bryant wastes no time in pondering the threat of a Siberian tiger when he’s going hard in or around the paint. But as surfers, the presence of sharks is something we have to face day in and day out. When we enter the ocean, we hand over our fate.
Sometimes fate can be a bitch. A savage, toothy bitch … More
www.stokednews.com