Same board, same guy, decades apart. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
Rob Machado is one of surfing’s most interesting characters. A high-level pro who beat the best of the best, turned world’s most famous freesurfer, Machado is, for a some, the epitome of what a surfer should be. He famously high-fived Kelly Slater mid-heat at the 1995 Pipe Masters, changing the dynamic from two competitors with all sights set on winning, to two old friends surfing in magical conditions while the world watched.
His can be spun into a romantic story: a man who turned down the trappings of professional surfing to follow the waves, wherever they led him. The entire story is probably a little more complicated than that, but a simple story is easier to digest… and that’s the gist, anyway.
In Rob Machado: By Design, David Malcolm, longtime Transworld filmer and co-creator of Dylan Graves’ Weird Waves, dives deep into the man/myth/legend that sits beneath all that slowly greying hair.
From his competitive background to his early choices of surfboard shapes, the short film is a peek inside the mind of one of the most stylish surfers ever to ride a wave. It looks at a variety of shapes that came from Machado’s mind, including the Seaside, Too Fish, Mashup, and the difficult to pronounce Machadocado.
“Rob shares his journey and some of the pivotal moments that have brought his surfboard label, Rob Machado Surfboards, to where it is today,” the YouTube description reads.
It’s been an interesting trek for Rob, and he’s not anywhere near the end. The road is long and the finish line is still over the horizon.
