The barrel. The tube. The pit. The green room. It’s the holy grail of this beautiful dance we call surfing, and everyone’s got a different name for it. A hole. A cave. A nugget. A slab. They’re the things that make us travel to far-flung corners of the globe, dodge responsibilities at all costs and persist through wet wetsuits, broken boards, debilitating injuries and psychotic crowds, all for just a fleeting glimpse of a delicate falling lip.
But when it comes to riding these crystal orbs, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution and choosing the wrong line can mean disaster. Tackling an almond runner with the same panache as a step-riddled double-up will send you on a one-way ticket to Underwater Town.
Here at Surfing Life, we’re all about helping you become a better surfer. So, we tapped the shoulder of Matty Grainger—founder of Manly Surf School, Surfers Gym and an absolute cone fiend in his own right—and asked for his tips, tricks and secrets on how to ride, survive and thrive in seven kinds of barrels.
“You’ve really got to feel what’s going on inside the barrel,” Matty says. “With all barrels, it’s a feeling thing.”
Get your notebooks out groms—class is in session.
1. SQUARE KEGS
Let’s set the scene: it’s the second round of the 2014 Billabong Pro Tahiti, and Teahupo‘o is doing exactly what every surf fan wants it to be doing when the contest rolls into town. It’s ten foot, bigger on the sets and pushing the world’s best over the edge of what’s possible to paddle into at this fearsome tropical slab. Heaving west bombs are thundering into the reef and North Narrabeen wildcard Nathan “Hog” Hedge is about to put on a clinic in how to ride big, square kegs.
Hog has done multiple strike missions to The End of the Road with Matty Grainger. And on this occasion, Matt was caddying in the channel watching one of his good mates and keen students show the top 44 how it’s done.
“I was coaching him when he got that crazy ten-point ride in 2014,” Matty tells Surfing Life. “He got that ten-point ride, I think, because he knew he had to commit and he knew he had to paddle hard and jump up quick.
“There’s nothing else you can do, you can’t fluff around in those heavy situations.”
Hedgey swung late beneath a cosmic blue mountain on a 6’2 Xanadu quad and clung onto the drop with his tippy toes before grinding through a triple overhead tube and emerging with his arms raised into the channel. Go and revisit it on YouTube—it’s an absolute cavern.
But, how did he do it?
“You want to be underneath the lip and paddling as hard as
