The Shortboard Revolution

For most of the 20th century, surfboards were long, heavy, and stately. Then, in a burst of experimentation between roughly 1967 and 1970, they got dramatically shorter — and the way people rode waves was transformed almost overnight.

The age of the longboard

Through the 1950s and early 1960s, the standard board was a “longboard” of nine to ten feet, often weighing more than ten kilograms even after balsa gave way to foam-and-fiberglass construction. The style that suited these boards was smooth and trim: nose rides, drop-knee turns, and a graceful approach to the wave. It was elegant, but it kept the surfer riding along the wave rather than attacking it.

A sudden compression

The change came fast and from several directions at once. In Australia, shapers and surfers including Bob McTavish, the Californian kneeboard designer George Greenough, and world champion Nat Young pushed toward shorter, lighter, more maneuverable designs built around deep “vee” bottoms and new fin ideas. In Hawaii and California, surfers like Dick Brewer refined faster, narrower shapes for powerful waves.

Within a couple of seasons, boards dropped from around nine feet to six — a reduction that would have seemed absurd only a year or two earlier. Lighter equipment let surfers turn harder, drive higher on the wave face, and tuck into the curl in ways the longboard never allowed.

More than equipment

The shortboard revolution was also cultural. It coincided with the late-1960s counterculture, and many surfers framed the shift as a turn toward a more soulful, expressive, individualistic relationship with the wave — the “involvement” school that prized feeling over formal style. Films of the era captured a generation reinventing the sport in real time.

The transition was not painless. A whole industry of longboard manufacturing was upended, and many accomplished noseriders had to relearn how to surf. But the new performance ceiling was undeniable, and it set surfing on the trajectory that leads directly to the high-speed, aerial-driven riding of today.

Longboarding never disappeared — it endures as a beloved discipline with its own deep following. But after the shortboard revolution, surfing was permanently a sport of two distinct traditions, and the cutting edge belonged to the small board.