Stuart Nettle April 27, 2010

Take a good look at the attached photo of Asher Pacey with his feet shuffled forward getting barrelled...

There's so many things to say about this photo that I'm not entirely sure where to start. Think I might begin with a personal viewpoint however, cos if there's one thing I'm good at it's talking about myself.

I've always been a fan of shuffling the deck. This despite being reared wholly on thrusters and the forward shuffle being a distinctly single-fin adaption. Even though it serves no functional purpose on a thruster I've been known to break one out for no other reason than it felt good.

On single-fins though the shuffle has a clear functional purpose. Performed just prior to pulling in it sets the riders weight forward engaging the forward rail and helping to build momentum from a board not able to generate it's own speed. When done correctly - meaning weight correctly distributed and good line chosen - the forward rail would remain engaged through the rest of the barrel.

These days however, keeping a rail engaged through the barrel is not near as important as it was - thrusters being much less prone to tracking. Thrusters also respond much better when weight is placed directly over the fins, so shuffling forward actually hampers the boards performance.

All of which makes Asher's move - a move borrowed from another era and very rarely seen in the water theses days - that bit more special.

But there's more...

I propose a question: if Asher did this in a competition and a competitor got an identical wave but rode the barrel with their feet in the normal position who would score higher? Two barrels, one with a forward shuffle, one without.

With the way the judging criteria has altered this year vis-a-vis surfers being rewarded for variety I'd suggest that Asher might just get the nod over his immobile mate. Note how layback snaps have made a comeback with pro surfers packing them into their travel bag to delight the judges in a way that three consecutive frontside reos won't.

Could shuffling the deck be a way of introducing variety to a bog-standard barrel?

Also, as surfing commentator Lewis Samuels once said: 'tube rides are the great leveller'. There are very few surfers who can pull a rodeo clown yet any competent surfer can get pitted and score equally as high.

Could shuffling the deck be a way of adding degree of difficulty to the great leveller? //STUART NETTLE

Photo of Asher taken by Ryan Williams