Tiago Pires has a forehand power carve that looks exactly like a forehand power carve is supposed to. Hell, the best surfers on earth look to him for pointers when it comes to power surfing. “There’s just something to the beauty of the pure carve,” said Kelly Slater. “You know, pure carve surfing that you would get from a Tom Curren or a Tom Carroll in the older days. From Taylor Knox and Parko… I think I would put Tiago in that category.”
Pires, in case you didn’t realize, has a new movie called SACA (it’s on iTunes and you want it!). It’s a biopic that follows the story of his life from his early days in Portugal to the biggest stage in surfing. It wasn’t a quick road–no road worth traveling ever really is–and it wasn’t something that came easy.
Pires studied the greats and in doing so, made himself into one of them. “From a very early age, I tried to identify my favorite surfers,” he explained. “It was guys like Tom Curren, Tom Carroll, Shane Powell, and later on, Kelly. They were the guys that I was trying to copy. They were the guys that I was watching all the time in surf movies, and I would go out and try to emulate. That eventually started creating my own line and developing my own style. It was huge back then. Style was everything.”
