True Grit
In a 1972 issue of International Surfing Magazine, a feature about the state of surfing in South Africa focussed much of its attention on two young cousins from Durban, Shaun and Michael Tomson. Shaun, the article asserted, was probably the better surfer of the pair, his performances technical, precise and calculated. Michael, on the other hand, was something special – especially in the realm of riding the tube, which in that particular era was still pretty much a ‘set your line and hope for the best’ affair. In florid terms, Michael is depicted riding a no-hope, sand-bottom barrel at Durban’s Bay of Plenty; not bulling through section after section, but feeling his way across the sandbar in an extrasensory display of reactive self-expression, an instrument of the wave’s will and…