Does Kelly Slater Know Who Andrew Jacobson Is?

Teaching surfing is a fool’s errand.

Seven years taught me that. It’s the quickest way to cultivate a deep, irrational resentment for something you once adored.

Days are spent roasting in the sun, your skin cracking under the assault, or, when the weather’s feeling especially vindictive, freezing your ass off in the cold and wind. On good days, you’re stuck with a front-row seat to what you’d rather be doing, just dangling there, tantalisingly out of reach. You wish to be anywhere else. On bad days, you wish the same.

Meanwhile, you’re heckled by teenagers, paid a pittance, and, more times than you’d care to admit, scrubbing the soiled remains of a wetsuit after some kid decided, for reasons that remain unclear, to defecate inside a layer of skin-tight neoprene. 

Andrew Jacobson, however, is not your average surf coach. 

“Malibu is kind of a bubble,” says Andrew. “When I tell people I do surf coaching, I think they expect me to be down in the whitewash at Zuma Beach with random people. I don’t want this to sound entitled, but it’s kind of different to that.” 

Instead of your typical come-one, come-all surf school, Andrew has crafted his business to cater to a select clientele from, shall we say, more discreet zip codes. His clients include those who can afford to fly him out to a wavepool on a private jet for a little bespoke coaching, or parents who’ve set their sights on making their kid the next pro, and are more than willing to pay a premium fee for a premium service. 

To reel in these trophy fish, take a gander at his business card below. How many surf coaches have those kind of credentials?

Andrew didn’t build his business for fun. Despite having sponsors, he doesn’t make enough from surfing alone to keep the lights on, so in order to keep the dream alive, he started a business that would allow him to stay in control of his time.

The only way to do that? Run the show yourself.

“I’m my own boss,” he says. “I can’t always say no to clients, but most of the time, I make it work and keep my schedule my own.”

The model appears to be working. Recently, he used surf lesson money to buy himself an apartment, and as Teva Dexter often reminds him, “Dude, I don’t want to hear you bitch about anything. You’re one of the highest-paid surfers on the planet.”

“This is all for the love,” Andrew says, explaining why he continues to chase swells, often last-minute, all around the globe. “It’s something that I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid. It’s hard to explain it to other people.”

Which brings us to the film at hand, This Is Where I Am, by Hunter Martinez and Chapter 11.

“Bridging that gap with Ventura and Malibu has never really been a full thing,” says Andrew. “I’ve been surfing up there my entire life, but Dane was always such a big deal. But as I got older, we started getting closer, and I started surfing with them a bunch and being part of that that chapter 11 group, which I’m very thankful for.”

Thankfully, in a slight update to the film above, Andrew does now have Dane’s cellphone number. Whether or not Kelly Slater knows who he is “is still up for debate.”

The film is part introducing Andrew the person — visiting his family home, having an awkwardly endearing tea party with Dane Reynolds and his parents, humanising him outside of his surfing.

“My influences growing up in Malibu were mainly my brothers, Dillon Perillo, and then as I got a bit older — and started growing into this body — Reef McIntosh and Danny Fuller came into town and kinda took me under their wing. That’s when I started getting into surfing bigger, heavier surf.”

What follows, of course, is a curdling montage of Andrew both conquering, and being utterly destroyed by, some of the world’s most unforgiving lefts, including his return to Cloudbreak, where a 2018 slam left his knee bent like it was plotting an escape from his body. 

“They literally had to rebuild my knee,” Andrew told Stab shortly after the incident. “The force of the wave dislocated my knee and pushed my foot backwards. The officially diagnosis was a torn MCL, torn PCL, fractured kneecap and strained ACL and LCL. They stitched together my PCL, but had to use a cadaver to piece together my MCL. It was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It was a traumatic part of my life,” he says. “It felt good to get the monkey off my back and score waves like that again out there.”

A very healthy way to process any ex that’s left their mark on you. But now, of course, Andrew’s moved on. These days, he’s in something more polyamorous, with four key players involved: himself, Pipe, Teahupo’o, and the old flame, Cloudbreak.

Shall we play a little game of fuck, marry, kill?

“I’d probably kill Cloudbreak. Fuck Pipeline. Marry Teahupo’o.”

Watch the love affair unfold above.