Joel Tudor – Biography
Joel Tudor’s surfing defies logic. The Californian goofy footer was blessed with an innate, almost extrasensory, approach that seamlessly blends effortless grace and perfect positioning in harmony with the wave’s contours and momentum. It’s not how he explodes off the face or tears away pieces of the lip. It’s not how he dominates in a contest jersey. Instead, his revolution rose in the form of non-movement; subtleties and nuances dictated by the wave’s very essence. Like the Curren principle, implying that movement was a commodity to be savored and used only in emergency, when the wave absolutely required it. His talent was such that was hard to quantify. Judges didn’t know what to do with Tudor’s surfing, so they simply ignored it and hoped he would eventually just join the rank and file of the “progressive movement”. But his approach would never be new. In fact, his surfing was the rejection of new; a refusal to hop and gyrate; a line in the sand between short and long boarding. And when his art became at odds with contest success, his cleverly cultivated image lifted him even farther above the fray. He did eventually win 2 world titles, but they serve as mere supporting details in the greater narrative that is Joel Tudor.
Tudor was born in 1976 and raised in the classic American surf city of San Diego, California. His father was an accomplished longboard talent who began surfing in 1959. According to Jason Borte, Tudor’s dad “first put Joel on a surfboard during a family trip to Puerto Vallarta.” Joel was already showing promise on a skateboard, but when he started riding longboards at 10, it was obvious something was afoot. By the time Joel turned 12, his father was taking the scrawny goofy footer to threatening waves like Todos Santos.
At the time, longboard surfing had no viable amateur ranks. Professional surfing was the only option for advancement, so Tudor turned pro at 14. Paper thin with long blonde hair, he glided across the wave with the waif-like grace of his nickname “Tinkerbell,” but to his rivals, he was a beast. Reflecting on his early days as a professional, he told Juice Magazine, “I had to surf against Nuuhiwa and those guys. It was a trip. Talk about shock. Imagine that you’re 13 and you’re in a nose-riding event with David Nuuhiwa. It gave me more appreciation of style.”
At 15, he won his first pro contest, making him the youngest competitor to win an ASP event. That same year, he was taken under the tutelage of legendary shaper Donald Takayama and later came to the attention of former world longboard champ Nat Young, who described the first time he saw Joel surf: “His surfing that first morning set aside my concerns about the direction of longboarding among the younger generation.”
He invited Tudor on an Oxbow promotional tour that would last several years. By this time, Joel Tudor was traveling the world with one of surfing’s most iconic personalities and was soon to be the sport’s highest paid longboarder. Matt Warsaw puts the moment in perspective: “By 16, he was the pencil-thin Raphael of the longboard renaissance…” But there were bumps in store for the Californian wonder kid. While on a boat trip in Indonesia with Nat Young, their vessel collided with an Indonesian fishing boat in the dark of night. In his book, Nat’s Nat and That’s That, Young describes a horrific scene of lost limbs and lost lives that to this day marks Tudor’s most disturbing memory.
At this point, Tudor was globally regarded as the sport’s foremost young stylist. Resisting the progressive movement tooth and nail, he punctuated his surfing with understated nuance, placing emphasis on perfect positioning and classic moves like extended nose rides and drop knee turns. But competitively, he continually fell just short of expectations. Although he won multiple pro events, the big one kept eluding him. In his quest for a world title, he took 2nd in 1992. In 1994, he was infamously blocked from catching waves and thus relegated to 3rd place in an all-Hawaiian final. He placed 9th in ‘96, and 5th in ’97 before finally winning the 1998 World Contest in the Canary Islands. He won the world title again in 2004.
While some have called his surfing “overblown,” and even Tudor himself admits to difficulty living up to the media hype, most are astonished that he has not dominated competition in the same manner as shortboard surfer Kelly Slater. Some (including Tudor) point to a “conspiracy.” While that’s debatable, there is little doubt that judges have been confounded by the task of quantifying Tudor’s approach. While it’s easy to put a number value on a re-entry or helicopter spin, it’s more difficult to do the same for positioning and flow. With 2 world titles and a record 8 wins at the U.S. Open of longboarding, it’s impossible to claim that he is not among competitive longboarding’s great athletes, but Tudor remains bitter. He has since become critical of professional surfing. In an interview with Juice Magazine, he spoke on the state of the sport: “I could care less about hanging out with a bunch of ex-Australian surfers killing whatever art form that’s left. They’re just butchering it until you almost want to puke.”
Tudor has since expanded the breadth of his surfing by riding fish, eggs, and all variations of 60’s inspired designs. He even went on to best shortboard shredder Bruce Irons in the Red Bull tube riding event. This experimentation, however, led to a falling out with his longtime longboard shaper and mentor Donald Takayama.
With his young son in tow, Tudor still makes the pilgrimage to the North Shore where his style and equipment appear a marked departure from the status quo in the lineup at Pipe. He has been shrewd with his fortune as well with stakes in a several surf-based businesses and even served as guest editor for an issue of Surfer Magazine, which was lauded for its unique tone and vision. He has also become enthralled by the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, earning a black belt and winning several Brazilian Jiu Jitsu titles.
In a telling moment, progressive longboarder Joey Hawkins convincingly beat traditionalist Joel Tudor in the 1992 World Championship Contest. It was clear that the so-called “Longboard Revolution” valued tricks and flicks and had abandoned its roots. Logic would dictate that to win, Tudor would have to change, to “progress,” but instead, he remained steadfast in the convictions that good longboarding is timeless, that shortboarding and longboarding are two distinct sensibilities, and that regardless of the outcome; he would stay true to his art. He held his line as he drove into the future and has since won 2 world titles and gone on to successfully brand himself as a sort of vagabond soul man, vacillating from New York City to Hawaii to California. Outspoken and opinionated on the beach while smooth and understated on the wave, Joel Tudor remains relevant, and his surfing is a testament to the timelessness of style and integrity.
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