Greetings, Shredderz! Today we resume our regularly scheduled scans of vintage surf ads, which is all part of the Sagas of Shred series. This week’s entry focuses on one of the greatest power surfers of all time: two time world champion Tom Carroll, riding for Quiksilver. This ad originally ran in the July 1988 issue of Surfer Magazine (Vol 29, No 7). I love the tagline in the ad: “Real Surfers. Real Surfing. Real Boardshorts.” Carroll is definitely a real surfer, and that snap is genuine too, but uh, those board shorts are real snug. But hey, this is a vintage surfboard blog, not a fashion advice column, so I’ll choose to focus on the stick Carroll is riding.

Turns out I actually featured the photo above in an earlier post. You can see the board Carroll has here is the same one in the photo at the top of the page. While it has a Byrne Surfboards logo, you can see the board was actually shaped by North Shore craftsman Pat Rawson.

It has a very similar airbrush pattern to the 7’8″ Carroll rode during the 1991 Pipe Masters. Carroll performed an insane layback snap at Pipe that remains one of the defining moments of his career.

It looks like Carroll must have stayed with this airbrush design for years, given the Rawson board was surfed in 1988, and the Pipe Masters board was ridden a full three years later.

Another funny note of trivia about the 7’8″ Pipe Masters board: apparently Carroll snapped the 7’8″ shape during the finals, and an enterprising young Jamie O’Brien tried to sneak off with the nose before it was returned to Carroll. The whole thing is detailed in a Stab Magazine story, which you can find here.