It’s interesting to see him surf different designs in simaler waves i feel.
In my opinion I reckon he surfed best on the single fins (one by Richie Pavel and one by his farther in the movie Glass Love) and Thrusters (check out the 90s surf film “lucifer rising” where he surfed very nicely in a variety of waves and indonesia also. its got some good surfing in that film but is pretty weird).
Now that Chip has called me out I will chime in! The thing that blows me away is the bit in Glass Love where he’s on his backhand at Kirra and Rabbit’s talking on the soundtrack- he’s stalling for the barrel by dropping his back leg over the rail- so much control it’s sick. I love surfing on my backhand and seeing that made me want to get in the water immediately. A big part of it all is seeing a really good surfer do things differently to the regular ‘Top 44’ style. Different boards, different approach, different whatever-it keeps things interesting. I do enjoy a bit of good old slash and tear and loft surfing though- finally watched the Pipe Masters documentary and there’s some incredible stuff on that- Lopez to A.I. and all inbetween. Rastovich too, he’s always good to watch and I get that ‘I wanna go surf’ jones. Trouble is I tend to watch movies when real surfing is not on the cards, so sometimes they make the flat spells or rainy days more painful!
…if i recall correctly , in the voiceover when they show neal getting deeply slotted , Rabbit says
“NO-ONE gets deeper tubes than neal at kirra .”
RABBIT said that !!
think about THAT for a minute …HE [rabbit] once got a 19 second tube there .
and rasta [Dave Rastovich] , in ‘exit through gate7’ [i think it was] , got something like a 12 second one [but …he was already deep in the tube when they started filming , so WHO KNOWS how long he was REALLY in there for ?!]
He is definatly one of the beset backhand tube riders in the world i reckon. That along with Taj Burrow’s DEEP and HEAVY long tube ride in France in the movie Montaj (And his massive tubes at 15’ + Box is incredible)
I like it in Glass love where he does a great backhand vertical reo on a small single fin his farther built. it’s what i’ve been telling people single fins can do for ages.