Taj Burrow, perennial good dude. Photo: WSL/Kirstin
When the Fiji Pro kicks off in a couple of days it will mark the end of a consistently cheerful era. At 37 years old, the relentlessly affable Taj Burrow has more consecutive years on Tour than anyone else. But after a love affair with professional surfing now into its 19th year, Taj has decided to hang up the singlet and concentrate on life outside of the Tour.
We’ve heard all the standard obituaries about how Taj ushered in a new era for professional surfing, was a perennial bridesmaid, a Benjamin Button forever grom, made seminal surf films…and blah blah all the rest. But besides all this, Taj’s greatest achievement is that he has never wavered from simply being a thoroughly bloody good bloke. Honestly, is there a more likable figure in surfing history? Has there been another pro surfer with Taj’s level of success without a character flaw of some description? To be fair, I don’t know Taj on a personal level, so I can’t make these claims with absolute authority, but I’m fairly sure that after 19 years of highs and lows, the cracks might have been exposed by now.
Taj Burrow’s one failure, if we can even consider it as such, has perhaps been that he’s too nice. The necessary cutting edge, the cutthroat win-at-all-costs, including pain-suffering-and-humiliation-to-my-fellow-man attitude, has never really been in Taj’s locker.
Whether this has been to his credit or his detriment is a matter of conjecture, or perhaps taste. But one thing is for sure – if during almost any one of Taj’s years on Tour, he had been able to distill and capture the ruthless competitive drive of say, Gabriel Medina, he would have a World Title for sure.
But despite no World Title, Taj’s record is impressive. He’s the only surfer ever to turn down a spot on the CT having qualified in 1997 at 17 years old but considering himself too young to be on Tour full time. When he did eventually join in 1998, he won Rookie Of The Year honors before finishing runner up to Occy’s comeback title in 1999. Taj has recorded a top ten finish in 15 of his 18 full years on Tour, and a top five finish 10 times. A remarkably consistent record, which, if not for Kelly “Achillies Heel” Slater, might have been quite staggering.
As fans we have a tendency to pigeonhole athletes as successes or busts. And it’s fair to say the surf world has labelled Taj, if not as a bust, then certainly as an underachiever. Too often he is dubbed: The Best Surfer Never To Win A World Title. But we might surmise that to be a champion you need to be a bit of an asshole. How else but through pure selfishness, single-minded focus, and the exclusion of friends and family do you mold yourself into the competitive machine? We respect champions because we admire their skill and dedication, and because we understand the sacrifice it takes to get to the top, but there are very few we’d enjoy a beer with. It’s fair to say that top athletes who are universally popular are as rare as hen’s teeth, and in this regard Taj Burrow might just stand alone.
The old saying goes that “nice guys finish last.” This is generally the lesson that sport teaches us, and in my younger years I was pretty much fully subscribed to it. I wasn’t always a complete asshole, but I did believe that there was a correlation between achieving success and being self-serving. As I get older I’m no longer convinced, and people like Taj Burrow have helped. Good people get theirs in the long run, and whilst Taj may not have a world title, he shouldn’t give a damn. He’s had a phenomenal career, circumnavigated the globe for 19 years, embraced the pro surfer lifestyle (pre coaching and diet plans), scored epic waves and, yes, made seminal surf films and all the rest. And he has done all of it with a huge smile on his face. Now he is walking away in the prime of his life, with health and memories, to surf without rules or start times, and to concentrate on being a dad. If that’s not success then I’m not sure what is.
