The Sleeping Giant Awakens

I was raised on a steady diet of surf magazines and Taylor Steele videos. When other kids collected baseball cards, I amassed a catalog of surf posters. It’s fair to say that I grew up a fan of surfing. Like a lot of kids my age, Rob Machado was my favorite surfer. Rob’s the kind of surfer who can change the way you look at a wave. He’s a generational surfer – we hadn’t seen anything like him before, and we won’t see another like him again.
    In recent years it’s been said that maybe Rob had lost a step; that he’d fallen from the grace of the world’s best surfers. Well, 2006 was a year in which Machado silenced his critics. In early February Machado won the Monster Energy Pro presented by Billabong, defeating a collection of surfers respected as the world’s premiere barrel riders and Pipeline specialists. Various surfing pundits regarded Machado’s most recent win at Pipe as more difficult than the heavily glamorized Pipeline Masters considering the level and specialization of the field.
In late July Machado claimed another headline grabbing victory at the Honda U.S. Open of Surfing. The third Open title of his hall of fame career opened the door for speculation that Machado could potentially make a run at re-qualifying for the WCT. Currently Rob sits in 68th place on the WQS rankings, and though a comeback seems to be a bit of a stretch, it’s refreshing to see Rob can still exert his dominance on what is increasingly a younger and younger crop of competitors.
Now six months removed from his open win and almost a year since his Pipeline victory the media attention and rumors about a WCT resurrection have long since dissipated. Machado’s celebrity in his hometown, however, is alive and well. You know you’re big time when surfers use the fact that you were in the water to validate how good a session was. “It was fun. Glassy, four to six foot and peaky… Machado was out.” From groms to grandpas, San Diegans revere Rob with a cult-like following. Like other San Diego sports icons Trevor Hoffman, Tony Gwynn and LaDainian Tomlinson, Rob’s greatness is tempered by humility most men envy. Rob didn’t have to win those two comps this past year to affirm his legacy, but the best win in the clutch -- they find ways to remind us why we root for them, why we ever became fans in the first place.