Matt Warshaw interviewed Tom Carroll a half-dozen times from the mid-'80s to the late '90s.

Is the world champ always the best surfer in the world?

In many respects, yes. The world champ is the guy who's been consistent, on top of his whole act. The surfers on the World Tour are the best in the world; they can surf anywhere at any given time. If a surfer can bring out his best from event to event over a whole year, and get those high places, I think he really can claim to be the best in the world.

Are we maybe putting too high a premium on consistency, though?

There's is a grey area there for sure. There are amazing surfers around the world who aren't on the tour; who aren't in the Top 16.

On a perfect circuit, would you emphasize or deemphasize consistency?

I'd look for a complete, well-rounded surfer.

How much purity do you lose, as a surfer, when going for a world title?

If you fully play by somebody else's rules, yeah, you're a victim. You lose your own personality. You have to find a balance. The most successful people in surfing, to me, show an incredible sense of balance between working within the rules and going off in their own direction.

Are there things you do to play by the world tour's rules that you wouldn't do otherwise?

Sure. Lots of things. Bouncing up and down across flat spots, groveling in small waves, stuff like that. Things that really aren't very aesthetic.

How important is it for the credibility of world title that the champ be a good surfer in big waves? I thinking, obviously, about [newly-crowned champion] Damien Hardman.

As far as the credibility thing goes, that's sort of a personal thing, I suppose. Damien didn't do too well in Hawaii. He's proved himself in other ways, but he's yet to prove himself in Hawaii. Maybe he doesn't give a shit about big waves. On the other hand, he put on some amazing performances during the year and showed that he can take out anyone. Then you've got a guy like Gary Elkerton, who cleaned up in Hawaii, and maybe that’s enough for him. Maybe it’s enough for him to just say, "I've cracked it where it really counts."

Billabong had two incredible contests at Waimea Bay [1985 and '86]. Getting back to what you said about wanting to put an emphasis on well-rounded surfers, should Waimea by used more often as a contest venue?

Waimea is hard to get, it doesn't really turn on all that often. But yeah, I think it's something to shoot for.

I've had a couple of cracks. Not mega-Waimea, where it's closing out a bit, and you have to be a little crazy to paddle out.

Which is how you want it, pretty much, if there's a contest. Something where it's a real test.

I think so, yeah, although the judging system would have to be changed a bit. I saw guys catch smaller waves at Waimea [during the Billabong events] and ride the foam to the beach. That's crap. You gotta stop judging the wave after it hits the shoulder. Instead we had guys going straight in the foam on a 10-foot board. And I mean, sorry, but you don't grovel at Waimea.

Has your pro surfing career gone the way you'd imagined it would?

As a kid I wasn't thinking about a world title or anything. Even later on, after I turned pro, it still wasn't really in my head. I remember MR [Mark Richards] once said somewhere that I could be the next world champion, and I was sort of surprised. I just wasn't frothing at the mouth at the idea of being #1. So the last five years—yeah, I think it's gone very well. Some ups and downs, but I'm happy with what I've done so far.

Aerials will become functional, rather than just a hop, skip and jump kind of thing. Surfers will be better-rounded. The best of the young guys today combine power along with light surfing.

"Light," as in tailslides and things like that? What's your take on that type of surfing?

It's not something I work on myself, but I've got an open mind to it, I suppose. It's almost more like snowboarding, I think. If you've been on a snowboard—and a lot of young surfers, especially in America, are riding snowboards—there's a lot of sliding. It's a delicate move, and I can appreciate that. It's sort of a free-floating sensation, and that can feel really nice, really free.

A lot of young surfers now are setting up one sliding turn after the other.

Well, they've obviously got a great need for that feeling.

I'm still enjoying that aspect. Just trying to bury a rail and hold it, fins in the water, and driving the turn as far as possible. That, but also making the moves all flow together. The grace involved is just as important as the power.

Kelly [Slater] just won the world title; how does he fit into all this?

Kelly is the future of high-performance surfing. Everybody can see that. He's coming closer and closer to putting the best of both worlds together; powerful and acrobatic. Kelly has a lot of respect for what's gone before him, but obviously he's heading straight into the future.

In 1988 you signed a five-year, million-dollar deal with Quiksilver, which was the richest contract in surfing up to that point. The surf media called you the Million Dollar Man. How did that feel?

Quiksilver didn't really want to make a big deal about that, and neither did I. The publicity -- that was more my manager [Peter Mansted].

Yeah, definitely. But it’s hard to say exactly where the pressure came from. For sure I didn’t want the tall poppy thing coming down on me. Also, I was a little worried about getting attached to a kind of lifestyle that I figured wasn’t going to be available forever. I guess I’ve never gotten fully used to the idea that you can make a living from surfing. For years and years I thought I’d better have something else going because there wasn’t going to be enough here (in surfing) to get by on.

Wasn’t there actually an overlap, when you were still working in a body and fender shop and had just started getting paid to surf?

Yeah, I did that apprenticeship when I was 16 and 17.

Just hammered out dents in cars, filled ‘em up, shaped ‘em out. But they'd give me time off to go and do contests. They let me go to Bells, go to the Stubbies, the Coke contest. I did that job for about 18 months, then the sponsorship money started coming and I had all those travel opportunities, and I kind of had to pick one job or the other.

How come salaries are such a big secret in surfing?

The industry people understand the consumer, and as soon as you start yelling out loud how much guys are making—well, there just aren't that many average surfers, average customers, who have a whole lot of money. Particularly here in Australia. Companies have to be really careful as to how their surfers are portrayed, and the big money situation usually doesn’t look good. It’s the same thing for the individual surfers. They have to watch out for the tall poppy trip. I was fortunate in that most people accepted the idea that I was making a lot of money. But it might be different for other people.

You’ve said it’s private, but I’ll ask anyway: what was the most money you made in a given year in surfing?

(Pause) 1989 was probably the year, and it was about $340,000 Australian.

You retired at the end of 1993, and you're working with Quiksilver Wetsuits; what effect did that have on your income?

I now make a little more than half of what I was making back then. But I'm hoping the money will improve over the next few years.

Most surfers have a much harder time with money and employment when they come off the world tour.

Psychologically, it's just a huge major deal psychologically for a lot of guys to come off the tour. You've spent almost your whole life in the water surfing, doing this one thing, and you haven't worked on any other skills, really. Where, say, all these people you grew up with who 

 go on the tour, they've put the time into something where, in their late 20s or early 30s, they're just starting to really go. It's a steady movement in their career. They’re ready for the world, and surfers a lot of times aren't ready at 

 magazine (May 1996) in white Stetson hat and wearing jewelry. He told me it was the kind of thing that you’d just run from as fast as you could. You’ve always been very careful about your image.

I think Kelly has fun with that sort of thing, he can be an extrovert, but it isn’t something that I can really pull off. I guess my image is built mostly around athleticism; taking the sport on as a professional athlete. My ambitions I think are a lot simpler than Kelly's. I thoroughly enjoy the ocean, and that’s really the only thing that I can honestly try to get across. The key is to not bullshit yourself, or anyone else. Don’t create something that isn’t there inside you. If you're faking it, it'll be really obvious.

[Photos: Art Brewer, Jeff Divine, Hugh McLeod, Don King]

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