Indonesia Submits Its Bid For The ‘Wonderkid’ Category

Back in 2015, I took my first trip to Indonesia. 

I won’t bore you with the details of surfing large, pumping Deserts with three others out or burrowing deep beneath Bali’s Mt. Batur to find a cave coated with brick-sized crystals (we get it, Indo is a special place). 

What I want to talk about is my week spent at Lakey Peak, a popular, multi-directional reef surrounded by several other world-class waves. 

The swell was moderate at best when I visited Lakey, so most of my days were spent splitting playful left and right tubes with roughly 15 other punters. But what I remember most from that trip was a little local kid who was constantly parked on the inside right, trying backflips on every wave…and nearly sticking them. 

To this day, I’ve never seen such shockingly progressive surfing from a person so small. He was—and we overuse this world but it truly applies here—clearly a phenom. 

Preternatural ability aside, I was surprised to find Hurley and Red Bull stickers on the kid’s sub-five-foot craft, as he was both extremely young (either 10 or 11, according to my retroactive math) and from a relatively remote region (Bali, Indonesia’s surf industry hub, was two islands away). 

Jump ahead five years, and a 15-year-old Bronson Meydi has grown like an Indonesian oil palm—his trunk long and lanky, his head stuck in that awkward phase between boy and man.

Bronson’s still sponsored by Hurley and Red Bull (for good reason), and if this video is any indication, he’s on track to be a legitimate force in surfing. There’s more than a hint of Eli Hanneman in his approach, and we can’t wait to see more.