2x World Champ Tom Carroll Catches ‘The Clap’ In Indo, Couldn’t Be Happier

It is both fitting and predictable that surfboard brand propaganda sees an uptick around this time of year.

Some of us are getting our yearly bonuses, unmarked envelopes from benevolent relatives, or simply the self-administered belief that we’ve rightfully earned it.

Brands are not oblivious to this. Surfboards are high-risk micro-investments. With this in mind, team rosters are assembled with strategic supervision to cover age brackets, certain skill levels, and aspirational projections packaged and delivered in the form of surf films that function less as documentation and more as seduction.

You might not be moved to purchase a Chris Christenson surfboard if your ideal of wave-riding comes via Italo Ferreira’s caffeinated water gymnastics, and that’s perfectly fine. Christenson caters instead to the avid devotees of rail work and tube time, such as Beau Cram, Aritz Aranburu, Thomas Victor Carroll, and Oscar Langburne.

Besides pushing those craft to their limits in Indonesia, much like Mikey C did on his OP3 and Lane Splitter, the crew discovered a bonus test track — a hidden gem that Oscar described as “kind of like a mini Desert Point/G-Land.” The Clap, as they named it (ironically, we hope), is the main character of Onboard Store’s latest film, “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret.”

PS, how fucking good is @ryzphoto (Ryan Williams) on the drone?