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Layback |
 The Largest Surfing EncyclopediaA-Z: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Advertisement
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When surfing's foremost player, Kelly Slater, was asked his opinion of the layback, his response was proof of the bumpy road the maneuver has faced. "Laybacks or lamebacks?" he questioned. "I'm on the fence as to what I think of them." But it wasn't always this way.
The '70s was a time to move -- Travolta was swinging his hips under the glare of the disco ball, the Jeffersons were rising to a deluxe apartment on the East Side and surfers had been paroled from longboard imprisonment, at last held back by nothing but their minds. It was in this free-thinking era that a statement emerged telling everyone "It's time we stop -- hey, what's that sound -- everybody look what's goin' down." It was the layback, a casual declaration of civil disobedience in the pope's living room, our own aquatic limbo act. After rocketing up the maneuver chart to become an overnight sensation, it succumbed to the perils of success, a victim of its own inherent nonchalance, falling off the map by the early '80s amid rumors that it was gone for good. Where exactly the layback has its roots is debatable, but few would argue that Hawaii's brash young afro brigade -- led by Larry Bertlemann, Buttons Kaluhiokalani and Mark Liddell -- were among the first to kick it. Oahu's South Shore was the scene. The place where surfing was rescued from extinction at the turn of the century had become the hotbed of hot-dogging. Surfboards were being cut and trimmed every which way, a foot off the nose, a stinger here, a swallow there. With newfound freedom in maneuverability, the backhand boys were determined to find a way to surf the Ala Moana bowl as deep as the frontsiders. Bertlemann, asked recently about the first time he saw someone perform a layback, responded, "You mean the first time we did one? Aww, man, it was an accident, really. We'd go up to crank a turn backside, and the fins were getting so small, the board just slid out. It was actually a recovery, just sliding down under the lip." Whether or not Bertlemann and company were the first, by the mid '70s, the sentiment was clear -- backsiders had just as much right to the barrel as everyone else. Along with tight bell-bottoms, butterfly collars and the Bay City Rollers, laybacks were it. International acclaim was just around the corner. On Australia's Gold Coast, the land of the long right point, goofyfooters were poised for revenge. "They had no choice but to find a way to circumnavigate the barrel on all those Gold Coast righthand pointbreaks," recalls unfairly advantaged natural-footer Rabbit Bartholomew. "Guy Omerod, Tony Eltherington and Dave McDonald all helped perfect it, but I would say Chappy Jennings and Glen Winton were the '80s masters. And Simon Anderson had a mean one at Narrabeen." As the Travolta era segued into the Reagan era, the layback was riding high, running perilously close to going over the falls. Looking back, the end was inevitable. Not since the soul arch had a maneuver been so disrespectful of the forces of nature, so ill-mannered as to look at a wave and shout, as Pat Benetar would a few years later, "Hit me with your best shot!" The new breed of Hawaiians -- mindful of their heritage and of the sport's religious background -- were having no part in this insolence. In 1982 at the Pipe Masters, the layback was dealt a near-fatal blow. With the world watching, Hawaii's Michael Ho not only won the event with an unprecedented dis play of pig-dog, lay-forward backhand tube prowess, but he did so with a cast on his forearm, drawing extra attention to the grabbing of his rail. For the layback, it was too much to bear, and it all but vanished on that fateful day, relegated to "hippie freaks" and "soul daddies". The age of rip, tear, and shred was upon us, and in it the old method was cast aside with the typewriter and rotary phone. For the better part of the '80s and '90s, the layback floundered to stay afloat. Defiant poses were forgotten while actual turns gained credibility. If you weren't carving cutbacks or launching airs, some would say you weren't surfing. One could lay back for an entire ride -- takeoff to kickout -- and draw nothing but strange looks and calls of "Beat it, kook!" from the channel. Furthermore, big-wave surfing reemerged in the mid '90s with the intent of erasing the layback from memory. Times were rough, to say the least, but help was on the way. Toward the dawn of the new millennium, retro became the rage. Everything '70s was groovy again -- even KC and the Sunshine Band started scoring gigs. Guys like Joel Tudor and Donavon Frankenreiter were taking it a bit far with their regressive single-finitis, but throwing out a little retro style was certain to solidify one's coolness. Granted, no one contends that the layback is a more proficient means of getting barreled on the backhand than either the lay-forward or the new-fangled Slater/Irons crucifix, but sometimes you have to make a sacrifice in the name of fashion. "I haven't really thought about it in a long time," adds Slater, "but it seems they could be real cool if they were done nowadays deep in a barrel. When we were kids they were just sort of flopbacks, but I saw Pancho Sullivando one at Pipe and it was really different than anything I saw out there recently. Everyone seemed to kind of be in awe that he did one at Pipe. You could easily go into a barrel roll and kill yourself." When Sullivan, a Hawaiian powerhouse and noted pig-dogger, eased back on an 8-foot screamer in the recent Pipe Masters as though it were a hammock in his backyard, it was indeed a highlight of the event. The soul daddies were ecstatic, lurching out from the shrubbery to exclaim, "It's back!" But in the next moment, their jubilation turned to jell-o as the judges' scored were announced. A measly 3.5, and Pancho was back to the pig-dog. Hopes of a layback resurgence vanished, trampled into the sand along with an empty can of Tab. Which is fine, at least for the true layback aficionados, who would rather live in obscurity, on the down-low, just kicking back. -- Jason Borte, July 2001
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