Clay Marzo and Victor Bernardo surf like themselves… and that’s rare these days. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
Clay Marzo and Victor Bernardo are not your average surfers. They are not your average pro surfers, either. Both march to the beats of their own drums, and they surf to those individual beats, too. In surfing, personal style is everything, but as competitive pro surfing gains more and more traction, surfers are surfing more and more like one another. That’s just something that happens when scores are attached to something — everyone starts to emulate whatever the judges happen to like at the time. But Marzo and Bernardo? They surf like themselves.
In Album’s latest surf film, Echoes Of, both Marzo and Bernardo appear to be at their very best: relaxed, calm, and fully immersed in this particular trip to Nicaragua. You can sort of tell when a surfer is feeling in tune with their body, their equipment, and the waves, and it’s never been more apparent than in Echoes Of.
In a recent interview with The Inertia, Marzo said something about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder that becomes clear in this film.
“It helps me to stay quiet and hyper-focused on surfing,” he said. “I feel like it helps me in a way, to see things before it happens.”
Marzo’s ability to read a wave might be unparalleled in surfing, and if you look for it in Echoes Of, it’s obvious. And what’s even more obvious is that surfing needs more characters like Clay Marzo and Victor Bernardo.
