The Stab Caddy 2.0: Nick Rozsa’s Homegrown Todd Proctor

Nick Rozsa in the Homegrown Series all but broke the internets on release, proving men with full beards can still be kings. Then he dropped a second set of Homegrown clips and they were even more well received. With the editing skills of Chris Papaleo, Rozsa has made the sharp end of our drop-everything-and-fucking-watch list with surfing that’s holistic and smooth. He needed fine equipment under his feet to play so hard, and for that we can thank shaper Todd Proctor. Proctor is a traditionalist and we dig. While the big players of the manufacturing biz pump out model after model onto the credit statements of consumerist gents, Proctor’s speciality is still in custom shapes and the conversations around them. “Ninety percent of my business is custom boards,” he says. “It’s been my priority for over 23 years. It’s something you have to guard and work hard to protect.” As for Nick’s crafts, they’re a specialised product in themselves. “Nick’s surfing is so radical, some people actually say, ‘now I’m no Nick Rozsa, so I don’t need a board like that.’ He’s that good he’s kinda intimidating in a way to your working class surfer… The majority of my clients say, ‘You tell me Todd, what do I want, what direction do you think I should go?”

The Specs:
Shaper: Todd Proctor
Model: SR-71
Dims: 5’10” x 18 3/4” x 2 3/8”

Volume: 27 litres

Stab: Can you tell us about the boards that made Homegrown?
Todd Proctor: Nick was riding 5’9” most of last year but he needed a touch more rail-line to draw longer arcs, especially for bigger waves to keep a bit of elegance and flow. We also went thicker from 2 1/4” / 2 5/16” and 26 litres last year because Nick started eating healthier and began training and he put on muscles weight, which was pretty cool. I’ve been running the rocker for close to 10 years, but tripped the nose rocker out of the tip, added slightly heavier con caves for grip and drive, and used another outline of my G-4+ model to give it some hips for reactive pivot. I also beefed up the rail volume because Nick pushes hard through his turns and needs a full pushback rail. So, it’s a bit of a conglomerate of a bunch of design concepts, some old, some new, some reinvented but all customised for Nick.

How long did that board last? I think he’s still riding it, so it’s been going strong four months now.

How much input does Nick have on his boards? Nick is the kind of guy who lets his surfing do his talking… and we surf often together. When I watch him surf I get ideas of what we can do. It usually goes, “Hey, I got an idea Nick…” And he’ll reply, “That’s just what i Was thinking.” And it goes both ways.

Nick’s style is so high-performance with heavy impact. Do you have to equate for that? Yeah for sure. Every surfer is different; style, approach, build, body mechanics, goals. Nick is his own person and he likes pushing things forward. That requires a lot of thought regarding different board ideas. I think that’s why we enjoy what we do. He like pushing the limits of stuff that is not the same old cookie cutter kind of surfing. He’s like a gnarly test pilot hitting the gas and torquing hard of the controls, And I’m the one building the planes. We both wanna go as fast, and be as critical and unpredictable, and styled out and smooth and radical as we can.

Were you surprised when you saw what he was doing on your boards in Homegrown? Yes and no. Surfing with him often I get to see it first hand. But it was awesome seeing the web world able to experience the wunderkind. I’m so excited to see what Nick has in store for the future. Look at how smooth his whole program is.

Shop the new FCS II Neo Glass range here.