Best Sections of All-Time: Dave Rastovich in Castles in the Sky

We’ve been talking a lot about style. And after a weekend with the WSL at the wave tank, I’m more fired up about it than ever. Watching the top competitive surfers in the world at the Surf Ranch sucked a bit of the mystery and spontaneity out of surfing and it has a tendency to elevate good style and can highlight flaws of bad style.

Somehow, even with the repetitive nature that the pool begs for, there are still a handful of surfers who manage to keep you guessing with where they’re going.

Ethan Ewing, Yago Dora, Carissa Moore and Caity Simmers really stand out and consistently put together incredibly flowing rides while making it feel creative and like anything can happen at any moment. Something that each of them had put them a cut above the rest was a classic layback hack they did with speed, power and flow.

I was scouring my surf history catalog for some people that do the best layback hack when I dipped into some Dave Rastovich rides. In this part from Castles in the Sky, Rasta lays down a handful of variations of that move that will mesmerize.

The section is split into a few parts and opens with Rasta surfing a fun wedging right all by himself. Kalani Robb then enters the picture in true goofy fashion opting to surf a wonky left that’s closing out. You journey through the streets of India, view its landscapes and portrait of many people before Mitch Coleborn hucks a couple airs. We come back to Rasta roaming through an Indian marketplace before he tears the bag out of this pumping right at a pier as a handful of locals watch from above.

Watch Rasta for a quick lesson in what you should look like when performing a layback hack in many of its various forms.—Brandon Guilmette