Technique Will Always Reign Supreme

You can be a good surfer with bad technique.

Hell, in 2015 we learned you can be a World Champion with bad technique. But nobody wants to watch a surfer whose arms flail wildly, whose back hunches like a French bellringer, and whose knees are magnetically opposed.

Which, despite its poor cinematic quality, is what makes this video of Taro Watanabe watchable. His body positioning, wave sense, and overall style is so damn sublime, that it makes these rudimentarily-captured, south of the border tubes look like a masterpiece. 

Watch how low Taro gets to his board. How closely (but not stiffly) his arms are held to his side. This is the type of surfing that’s always enjoyable to watch, even if it’s not paired with the craziest airs/tubes/turn that exist in the surfing webosphere.