Clay Marzo does things on a surfboard that no one else can do, and he does them with an absurd frequency that proves none of it is luck. And, like most people, when he’s comfortable in his surroundings, everything is easier.
Yes, Clay is obscenely good at riding a surfboard in any condition, home or away. But he is, by his own admission, a little uncomfortable in the spotlight. A quick story: a few years ago now, I sat in the sand at Supertubos. It was ridiculously big, and the WSL event was just around the corner. The scaffolding was half-way set up and many of the pros that would be competing were showing up as the sun rose. Many of those pros had a person with a camera and a giant lens trained on them, and Clay was strangely hesitant to paddle out. I thought at first that he was hesitant because the waves were bigger than most people had seen them there, but I was wrong.
Clay just didn’t like the fact that he would be surfing those waves in front of cameras. He did eventually paddle out — and he surfed like only Clay can surf — but it took him a while to work up the courage. From what I’ve seen of his surfing, though, he appeared to be pulling punches a bit.
In the video you see above, which was shot at his home break on Maui, Clay is not pulling punches. When he’s comfortable, Clay’s genius on a wave shines through. Wave after wave, Clay threads his way through the place that he loves the most: the inside of a tube.
