Long before his prominence as a soft-rock folk musician, permeating through coffee shop speakers the world over, Jack Johnson was a surfer.
He grew up on the North Shore of Oahu, alongside the Momentum Generation – guys like Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Taylor Knox, Shane Dorian, et al.
And undoubtedly, if only by osmosis, he had pro surfing dreams at one time.
Hence why, at 17 years old, he was competing in the trials for the Pipeline Masters, vying for a spot against other locals in the main event, as seen in the clip above.
“17 year old Jack Johnson competing in the 1992 Hawaiian Pipe Trials,” Nalu TV captioned the clip. “Respect. We are humbled to be curating The Pete Hodgson Archive and are happy to be sharing his footage with our surf tribe. Have a good one. Aloha.”
Slater, hopping in the comments section, got nostalgic:
“The list of guys Jack was against in that final was amazing. I wanna say JBG [Johnny Boy Gomes], Gerry Lopez, Mike Ho, Marvin Foster, and maybe Liam McNamara from memory.”
More recently, long gone from his teenage years of toying with a career in pro surfing, Johnson has been charging at home in Hawaii. Like, during the day of massive swell in which the Lexus Pipe Pro was controversially called off, Johnson got a bomb at Sunset.
Commenting on that day, photographer Bobby Owens wrote:
“Only a handful of surfers were committed to catching the huge outside sets marching their way across the channel from the west. The rest of the crew, which included some competitors warming up for the contest, caught the smaller in between sets further inside. There definitely were some ‘Hero’ waves ridden that day.”
Jack’s still got it.
More must-reads: