The Tiger family is one of Pyzel’s greatest accomplishments. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Jon Pyzel is, without a doubt, one of the world’s best shapers. Some of the world’s best ride his creations — the most notable of whom is John John Florence — and they ride them for a reason. He’s made a lot of boards over the years, and some of them are related to each other, if that makes sense. Take the Tiger family, for example.
Making surfboards is a constant walk on a fine line. Taking a bit of something from here will affect a bit of something from there. Adding this or that will have an effect on that or the other. Surfers aren’t all the same, so ideally you’ve got a surfboard made by a shaper that knows how you like to surf, but that’s not the case for the vast majority of surfers. The vast majority of surfers have something off the rack, something made for a much larger group. But they all started somewhere, and with each passing year, the next generation of surfboards is changed a bit in order to make it better. But what makes it “better” isn’t the same for every surfer. The Tiger family of surfboards comes from the same DNA, but like any family, they’ve got some notable differences.
“Most of our boards derive from previous model tweaks by friends, team riders or Jon exploring new shapes and designs,” wrote the Pyzel team. “The Tiger Family Breakdown with Jon explains the evolution and origin of each model, from the White Tiger, Red Tiger, Power Tiger and finishing off with our newest release, the Tiger Twin.”
“This is a bunch of boards we’ve been using and developing over the last couple of years,” Pyzel explained as he grabbed the White Tiger model from the wall behind him. “… Basically, the whole thing started with this. This is a board that I made a one-off of for John John a few years ago.”
Pyzel was attempting to make something a little more forgiving when the waves weren’t all that great. He made four of them, but they sat in John John’s garage for quite some time before he took them out. When he did, though, he loved the White Tiger. But like any good surfer, he thought about what else was possible with it.
“Naturally, he went to the next step of ‘how can we make this into a shortboard that I can go ride in contests when the waves are bad?'” Pyzel remembered. “That spawned the Red Tiger.”
From there, the Power Tiger was born. And after that, the new Tiger Twin came to life. The video is an interesting look at how shapers and the surfers they make boards for evolve — and in the case of the Tiger family, they’ve evolved into a family made for just about any condition an everyday surfer might encounter.
