A Hard Road To The Dream Tour 

Margaret River rookie Jacob “Chippo” Willcox is the most prepared debutant in Championship Tour history. 

The blond goofyfoot has surfed in 13 events at the highest level since his first CT wildcard in 2013, as a 16-year-old at the Rip Curl Pro Portugal at Supertubos. There he beat Kelly Slater in the opening round, who was then knocked out altogether by Frederico Morais a round later, massively helping Mick Fanning in his world title battle with the GOAT. Jacob came up against MF in round three but, “He turned up late!” says Mick. “I was laughing, like, ‘What are you doing, kid?’ It shows you though, he’s been around for a long time and has always had potential.”

“I’ve been backing Jacob for years,” says fellow West Australian Taj Burrow. “I can see the effort he’s put in and the results he’s been getting with how well he’s surfing, and how fit, strong and focused he looks. We’ve always all been thinking that surely this all has to fall into place. He’s got all the right ingredients, so it’s awesome to finally see it come together for him.”

What are these ingredients? Take an insatiable hunger for reef-bottomed tubes, sprinkle it with a wide selection of aerial wizardry, and mix it all with a dose of lightning-fast turns and smooth transitions and you’re well on your way to CT success. 

A skinny kid by nature, Jacob’s done plenty of work in the gym to add some bulk. These days he stands 5’11” and weighs in at a prison-fit 80 kilos. “He’s a man now,” Stace Galbraith says of the 26-year-old. 

Jacob comes from a salt-of-the-earth, working-class family. His parents, Mick, a plumber, and Emma, a nurse, grew up in Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland, then left to drive around Australia in their early twenties. They made it to Margaret River and never left. Three kids later, they live on top of the hill at Gnarabup, looking out over the ocean where Mick still wrestles Mainbreak most mornings, preferably when it’s massive. Jacob and his parents have gone halvesies building a beautiful AirBnB down the road, on the block they originally inhabited when they first arrived in Margies.

“I don’t think we can ever return to the east coast full-time,” says Mick. “After we’d been over here a dozen years, one of the old boys in the water told us we could try to leave but we’d always come back because the Indian Ocean gets in your blood. I think he was right.”

It’s hard to mention Jacob without fellow Margaret River talent Jack Robinson’s name coming up. If you follow surfing from a safe distance, you might assume that while Jack is a young gun with the world at his feet, Jacob is a grizzled veteran of the Grind Tour just trying to qualify once before he gets put out to pasture. In fact, the pair are both 26 years old, great mates and are fired up to finally be doing this dance alongside one another.

“It’s a dream come true!” says Jack. “We’re from the end of the world down there, so for two kids from a small place to get to the big stage is crazy. And we’re just getting started, we’re spring chickens!”

It would have been easy for Jacob to resent Jack’s success, but that’s not who he is.

“The year Jack qualified he needed to win the last event and I needed to come fourth,” Jacob says. “In the end, he won and I came fifth, which hurt, but it was still cool to be there and high-five him and watch him get chaired up the beach. It’s awesome to see a friend achieve so much, and it’s just more motivation for me to do the same.”

Jacob’s well-documented 10-year odyssey to the top flight has not been a nightmare in the grander scheme of things. In an era of mindless wars and endless natural disasters, a few near-misses, a broken leg, and a dodgy score here or there are first-world problems when you’re traveling the world getting paid to surf — but the journey has definitely stiffened Jacob’s resolve to succeed.

“Every time I narrowly missed out, it made me look harder at myself,” says Jacob. “Like, fuck, I need to get better at this, or stronger at that. If I’d qualified in 2018, maybe it wouldn’t have been that good for me anyway, and I wouldn’t be as ready as I am now. It’s forced me to keep working and made me a better surfer, a better competitor, and definitely a better person.”

“The road Jacob’s taken is going to make him one hard motherfucker,” says Taj. “He’s been through it, a lot of emotional up and downs, and now he knows what it takes to get what he wants, and that’s putting your head down and fucking going for it! Now that he’s got there, it’ll make him even hungrier for more, and he’ll put his head down even harder now he’s there. It’s gonna be great viewing. I’m such a fan of the way Jacob manhandles hefty tubes, and I can’t wait to watch him finally attack the heavier waves on tour this year.”

Let’s talk heavy water then, shall we? As seen in countless edits, as the result of many a childhood winter avoided up north, Jacob is a maniac in the militant coils of Western Australia’s Coral Coast, where the Indian Ocean slams into the desert and spews filthy pits all over — The Bluff, Gnaraloo and beyond.

“Jacob and Jack have been the two best guys out at Gnaraloo for a while now,” says Taj. “Seeing those two take their skills to the tour together is gonna be so sick. I bet Jacob can’t wait to attack some of the bigger, barrelling lefts, he’s gonna be ready for war.”

“There’s something in the veins of West Aussie kids,” says Mick Fanning, “maybe it’s too much red dirt, but the fear gets rubbed out of them at a very young age. Jacob’s been sponsored by Rip Curl since he came outta the womb, so I’ve known him for a long time. I remember in Hawaii once, he was only a little grom and then he changed gears and just started sending it pretty hard at Pipe and Backdoor. He turned from a boy into a man and was suddenly standing out at the Box and Gnaraloo and all those other waves back home. It’s been great to see his evolution.”

“We’ve been going to the desert as a family every year since I was an infant,” says Jacob. “When I was in Year Five, we went and lived up there for six months. Dad was working on the station, and I would have to get my homework done every morning, do a few timetables, a journal entry, a couple of other things, and then I was allowed to go surfing. It was epic, and that was when I really started to love surfing and developed a strong connection to the region.”

“Coming from WA I definitely think we have an extra connection with nature,” says Jack. “It’s like Hawaii, there’s a lot of energy. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s also very rugged. I don’t know if the red dirt rubbed the fear out of us (laughs), maybe it did, but Jacob and I have spent plenty of time in the desert, and it’s shaped who we are.”

There’s a lot of noise around the mid-year cut, but Jacob is as prepared as one can be to avoid getting guillotined in his hometown. He has collected more CT jerseys over the past decade than plenty of folks who’ve qualified and surfed a full season. He’s never competed at Pipe, but we know he’ll rule out there. He’s had decent results at Sunset on the Q and CS, and he’s done well in CTs at Supertubos and Bells (including a quarterfinal finish in 2019, when it was pumping), and at home in Margaret River on the back of trials wins and wildcards.

All this talk of the pre-cut events being specialist waves goes out the window through that lens, and on the back of finishing the Changaz in third, Jacob will be competing in 2024 as the 25th seed, taking on the middle-order in the opening rounds as opposed to coming up against the big dogs as a wildcard, seeded 35 or 36. All good omens for success at the first five stops, though Jacob puts it more succinctly. “I love to get barrelled and surf fat rights,” he deadpans. 

Perfect.

With WA’s powerful waves reducing the need to generate speed, and as a result of his previous slender physique, Jacob’s turns and flow lagged in comparison to his pit and punt prowess growing up — but with his recently added beef comes plenty of grunt, and making the CT at 26 rather than 20 sees those growing pains left long behind.

“I had to learn to surf shitty waves,” he says. This is one of the reasons Jacob now lives on the Gold Coast, as well as being closer to his shaper Darren Handley, having access to Surfing Australia’s High Performance Centre (where he holds a scholarship), and being 12 hours closer to most CT destinations than if he were traveling from WA. “It’s strictly a business decision, I’ll be back home one day.”

Jacob even has an actual real-life job on the Gold Coast! He works at the DHD factory picking up blanks, dropping off finished boards, and doing “a bunch of other random shit. Darren has told me I’ve got no more shifts for a while though, but I really like it, it keeps me honest.”

To say Jacob is grounded would be an understatement of the highest order, and you don’t have to look far to see where he gets it from.

“Jacob doesn’t have it in him to be big-headed,” says Mick Willcox. “Which is lucky because there’s no way I’d allow it anyway. It’s great to see he’s made the CT, it’s awesome, but for me it’s much more rewarding to see the man he’s become. It’s a relief that he qualified because I’ve seen how much hard work he’s put into it. To see how close he’s come so many times would have been hard to swallow, but he’s always played the whistle, accepted it and moved on.

“I love seeing Jacob paddle out whenever he’s home — there’s a strong community in the water and he always gives everyone time. He knows the old boys, he encourages the youngsters and all their parents come up to me afterward saying how great he was with their kids, and that’s all that really matters.

“I think your job as a parent is to make your kids better humans than you are. I didn’t set the bar too high myself, but Emma sure did, and all our kids have cleared it comfortably. We couldn’t be prouder.”

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Bonus: FIVE FAST FACTS on JW

Jacob got his nickname when his younger siblings India and Charlie couldn’t pronounce his name as toddlers, and somehow landed on “Chippo” — sound familiar, “Brother”?

He shares a June 2nd birthday with Taj, but is 19 years younger.

Jacob graduated from Margaret River High! John McTaggart, Creed’s dad, was one of his teachers. 

Jacob will wear the number 39 on tour. It was not only the number of the Willcox family home growing up, but Jacob’s beloved late grandmother was born in 1939. She sadly passed away last year after a battle with cancer and didn’t get to see her grandson qualify.

Jacob had no interest in throwing a qualifying bash when he came home for Christmas — finally making the grade was more of a relief than a cause for celebration. The Margaret River Boardriders weren’t having any of that however, and 60 of his nearest and dearest surprised the shit out of him with a big bash at their local one afternoon. Tears may have been shed. 

“It was amazing,” said club president Jerome Forrest, “the whole town is so damn proud of him. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking back on it.”