Proof of Concept

Harry Bryant sits on a barstool in the Driftwood Spars, a 400-year-old pub in Saint Agnes, Cornwall, England. He’s halfway through Guinness number two and gaining pace. Outside, in his Cornish grandma’s car, there’s a magic 7’1″ shaped by Joshua Keogh that has been around the world for 18 months. 

The board stems from a surfer-shaper design partnership that opens a dusty cul-desac in the evolution of the modern surfboard. It’s a story that starts with the boards Maurice Cole made for Tom Curren, nods to the rocker in Shane Herring’s banana boards shaped by Greg Webber, and even includes influences by Michael Peterson. The way the board surfs isn’t a happy accident, but rather the meeting of a hyper-talented surfer and a meticulous shaper. 

“My friends laugh at me,” Keogh says, “because I only have one surfboard, which is  5 years old.” He’s recently stripped things back to basics, buying a plot of land in Wyndham, Western Australia, where he lives with his girlfriend and two dogs in a caravan. 

“[Keogh] comes over for a cup of tea and it’s like you are sitting down with a 70-yearold man,” Bryant says. “He’s like a carpenter, or someone that builds robots—not just a board shaper, but a nerd scientist. I’ve never even gotten him in the pub.” 

When COVID-19 hit Australia, Bryant moved south to Merimbula, New South Wales, and lived with Keogh’s parents. The pair started experimenting. 

“MP had a surf shop out there,” Bryant says. “For a tiny farm town on the Victorian border, it has a rich board history.” While remaining underground, Keogh’s boards ​​have been quietly gathering attention for years. Bryant’s performance on them validates the designs. 

“Since he started making me boards about three years ago,” Bryant says, “we’ve really understood each other. I could tell from the very first board he made me. I gave him feedback, and he didn’t really say anything, but he applied every single tiny thing to the next board. That’s when sparks flew, and I just wanted to dive into it.” 

The lines might be different, but Bryant’s surfing on the 7’1″ is typically reckless and raw. “Where I’m trying to take my surfing in bigger waves,” he says, “is drawing inspiration from Tom Carroll’s surfing Pipeline back in the day. Why hasn’t anyone done a better snap since then?” 

“It’s a heavy board,” Keogh says. “We’ve been tricked into thinking weight is a bad thing in surfing. Weight anchors the board to the water, which isn’t a disadvantage unless you are trying to do aerials. Harry’s board has swing weight in the nose, but he gets on the tail and he’s riding a cutting-edge performance board. There was a session he surfed at 6- to 8-foot Draculas. He was just going crazy—blowing the fins out, full roundhouse cutties. People are going to freak out when they see the video.” 

They started off working on Curren-style shapes from the late ’80s with low, square rails and Cole’s reverse vee, but with conventional outlines. Keogh made the 7’1″ with a single-fin outline, a beak nose with a flattish nose rocker, and a full-on razor-edge rail from tip to tail, but with a huge tail lift and double concave through the bottom. He pulled inspiration from Webber, cutting in a massive 3.5 inches of tail kick and planting the fins—a small, bespoke quad set made by Greg Trotter at Soar—way up on the rail to fit the tail curve. 

“Maurice still has some of those boards he was making for Curren, and we went down to Victoria to check them out,” Keogh says. “But those flat nose rockers and extreme tail kick just disappeared when Kelly came along. It isn’t unique, but hasn’t existed in our surfing landscape for a long time. Maurice even came and looked the blank over. He measured it up with a ruler, making sure I got the contours right.” Further proof of concept was made in Hawaii, at second-reef Pipeline, under the feet of Justin Quintal, who borrowed Bryant’s board. After a huge tube, Keogh’s step-up held a line through a crazy, spitting double-up. 

“My board didn’t let Justin down on that wave,” Keogh says. “He got the wave of his life on it, and it did the job. Joel Tudor told me, ‘You aren’t a shaper until you are proven in Hawaii.’ It feels like I stopped just being a trendy guy who makes fishes.” 

[Photo by Mark Walker.]