A Look Into The Life Of Surfing Superstar Rob Machado
Feb 16 2007 / Los Angeles, CA Rob Machado, a.k.a. “Rubber Toe” or “Mob,” is one of the most recognizable faces in the world of surfing with some of the biggest hair. The stylie 34-year-old goofy-foot spent 10 years on the World Championship Tour (WCT) and in the past five years has transitioned into a mellower pace of living-surfing in select contests, starring in surf videos, ripping for surf photographers and traveling with friends to waves worldwide.Rob was born in Australia to an American dad and an English mom and his homeland remains his favorite country. Had his parents stayed there, he could easily be a VB-swilling, vegemite-spreading, “Oi! Oi! Oi!” chanting born-and-bred Aussie. Instead, the family relocated to Encinitas in the late 70’s and he became a reef-surfing So Cal stylist who looked up to Tom Curren.
When his parents brought him to America he was three-years-old. He told Surfline about taking speech classes to drop his Aussie accent: “Picture some funny-looking little kid with an afro going, 'Yeeeeah, roit, matey,'" says Machado. "I don't remember it, but I guess it freaked them out." The accent was long gone by the time he picked up a board when he was 10-years-old. He did the full on grom scene, surfing in all of the regional and National contests such as the National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA) series. At 14 he received his first paycheck from a contest. “I thought it was pretty cool so I kept going,” he e-mailed. “I kept getting these checks as the years went on and the next thing I knew I was signing my first contract when I was 18.”
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Although surfing was putting money in his pocket his first year of high school, he managed to stay focused on his studies: “I played a lot of sports, that is, until surfing took over,” Rob e-mailed. “But I stayed focused on school and graduated with a 3.8 grade point average. My favorite class was ceramics, after surfing.”
He joined the WCT tour in 1992. During his 10 years on tour, he finished top three in the world two times. One of the tour wins was the illustrious Pipe Masters, a memory he holds close to his heart: “Being known as a stylish surfer means the most to me (in my surfing career),” he e-mailed. “Next would be the Pipeline Masters in 2000. That was the best surf contest for me ever.” It was the last event of the year and he scored a perfect 10, winning the contest and skyrocketing from eighth in the world to third. Rob is considered by many to be one of the best surfers in the world, despite never claiming a world title. Although he came close-In 1995, he was only 80 points shy of taking the world title from Kelly Slater.
Surfing has brought Rob friends, fame, fortune, travel and ultimately love: “I was surfing on this little island in the Indian Ocean and she was working at the contest.” “She” is his wife Patou and that “little island” is Reunion. He and Patou have been married for eight years and have two children-Rose, five, and Macy, two. While some pro surfers like to get crazy on the weekends, frequenting bars and parties and such-Rob is a family man and his favorite thing to do on a Friday night is simple-dinner with his family and “some good couch time.” His favorite food? His wife’s cooking.
Not being on tour has its advantages. Rob can plan travels based on swell rather than a contest locale, doesn’t have dozens of the world’s best surfers around him battling for waves at all times and can spend plenty of time with his wife and kids. It’s all come full circle-he’s living in Southern California and surfing like he’s a grom: “It all depends on the waves and the conditions but I try to be in the water every day-no matter what.”
Life Off Tour: The Story of the End of Rob’s WCT Career
Machado’s last year on tour was rocky. Due to 9/11, there were only five WCT contests. Due to a broken hand and baby mama drama-his wife was experiencing pregnancy difficulties, he surfed in only two of them. He finished third in the world in 2000 and last in 2001, despite winning the U.S. Open in Huntington Beach.
There is a certain amount of drama in what went down when Rob attempted to secure an injury wildcard for the 2002 WCT: “I typed a letter to be read at a meeting, and it was super-straightforward,” Rob told Transworld Surf in a 2004 interview. “(It) just laid out the facts: Thirty-third at Bells, broke my hand, pregnancy difficulties, Brazil and baby-there’s my year.” Rob was not at the end of the year ASP meeting when the letter was read: “I was told somebody stood up and read my letter, I still don’t know who. From what I’ve heard guys were asking questions, and who was there to answer for my case? People were asking why I wasn’t doing WQS events. Basically bagging on my request. I wasn’t there to hold my ground, voice my opinion, or say what I did was wrong or right. But that’s all hearsay. I don’t know what really went down… I wanted to see who was at the meeting, who voted, what were the results of the tally. You would think I’d get that information. No way, no one had it. It should be straight out of the rule book-if you want to apply for an injury wildcard, you have to be there at the meeting, unless you’re bedridden in the hospital.”
ASP General Manager at the time, Al Hunt, is credited with saying: "The WPS (the pro surfers’ union) has a rule that if you apply for a wildcard slot as an injury, you must attend the meeting, state your facts, and then those at the meeting–open to all WPS surfers–vote for who gets the wildcards. Rob did not show at the meeting, had complete knowledge of it, so he was taken off the list."
In the interview, Rob recalls showing up for the Pipe Masters and having other WCT guys avoid eye contact with him: “This was something I did for ten years,” he said. “I spent a lot of time and effort to try and make professional surfing better, you know? I was trying to make it exciting and take it to another level. Then all of a sudden you’re dusted off, gone. At first I felt totally betrayed. I was super bent, bitter… I didn’t even want to look at certain people. I thought about the whole thing, ask for another vote, this and that. Then I started feeling like the crybaby, like, ‘it didn’t go my way, let’s do it again.’ I started going through all that. I wrote letters but never sent any of them, just hate mail. It was good therapy. I came back from Hawaii, it was January here, Rose was a month old and I sat around and thought about it. That’s when I accepted it.”
Rob not only accepted his fate, he forged a new path for himself. Since that time, he has appeared in hit surf flicks such as Thomas Campbell’s Sprout and The Moonshine Conspiracy’s Shelter. In addition to filming, he free-surfs for photographers, takes surf trips with his friends, spends time with his family and enters select contests.
He continues to show that he is a threat to anyone unlucky enough to draw a heat with him. He won the 2006 U.S. Open in Huntington Beach, the largest competition in the U.S. and was inducted into the surfing Hall of Fame during the event: “It was great,” he e-mailed. “But it did feel a little premature seeing as I was still surfing in the event. But it was definitely an honor to be put in the Hall of Fame.” Rob’s hand and feet imprints are laid in cement along with other inductees along the sidewalk outside of Huntington Surf and Sport. He also won the 2006 Monster Energy Pro held at Pipe which is reminiscent of his win at Pipe Masters in 2000. He scored a perfect 10 in the final and had the highest scoring heat at the contest-a 19.17 out of 20. He also anchored the West Coast team in their first victory against the East Coast team in the summer X-Games competition “The Game” held at Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
Rob has carved out a nice lifestyle filled with surf, travel, family and friends and has no plans to surf on the WCT again-although he probably could if he wanted to. But can you blame him? “I still compete in a few events here and there,” he e-mailed. “But for the most part I travel on my own schedule and do my own thing, far from the tour. I get to go to places that I want to go to and I get to travel with people that I want to travel with.”
Mother Earth and Music: Two of Rob’s Passions
Mr. Machado has his own foundation called, simply enough, The Rob Machado Foundation. His charity gives back to causes close to his heart, specifically music and the environment. He hosts an annual charity golf tournament as well as the Annual Rob Machado Surf Classic-both of which raise money he then gives away.
This year’s golf tournament went off without a hitch: “The event was great,” Rob e-mailed. “It seems like we always have a great time. It’s really about just getting a bunch of friends together to play a weird round of golf, have some fun and go home with a smile on your face.” Rob has been playing golf for 11 years but plays less than he used to. The charity event is a good excuse to hit the links while helping others at the same time.
Organizations he has donated money to include: Life Rolls On, The Boarding For Breast Cancer Foundation and Healing Notes. He is also on the Surfrider Foundation’s pro team and competes in their charity surf events such as The Celebrity Surf Jam. He donates money raised from his charity events to the organization as well. He also supports the music and art programs in the San Diego elementary school system. He told San Diego Magazine that “music education can get overlooked, and it’s such an important part of life.”
The Rob Machado Foundation is also a donor to VH1’s Save The Music Foundation. According to VH1’s website, the mission of the foundation lies in “restoring instrumental music programs to public schools, ensuring every young person’s access to the benefits, challenges, and joys of music.”
There is a reason Rob feels so strongly about music education. The life of a pro surfer is filled with a lot of down time. There is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait in the form of airport terminals, flat spells, tide changes, road trips and lonely hotel rooms. Some turn to music as a way to fill the void: “I play guitar here and there,” Rob wrote. “I started playing when I was 16.” The guitar playing led in time to jamming with fellow friends and surf vagabonds and in the mid-nineties, through a connection friend Peter King had-hooked the interest of Sony. King, Machado and Kelly Slater formed a band called, appropriately enough, the Surfers. They were signed by Epic records, put an album out, played some shows and had some fun. Rob, being friends with Eddie Vedder, even got the band a gig opening for Pearl Jam in front of 18,000 people*. Despite the good times, the stress of their surfing careers combined with the late nights and lifestyle that came with the band, led to their break up.
Kelly Slater addressed the split in his book, PIPE DREAMS: a surfer’s journey: “Between 1998 and 1999, the Surfers toured around California and in Germany. Music was my pastime, so it was impossible for me to devote enough time and energy to the process to make it work. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my surfing career, and the Surfers eventually went our separate ways. In May 2000, we played our farewell tour in Japan.”
In a 2001 interview with EXPN, Machado told writer Steve Zeldin: “It was crazy. It was an experience that came at a pretty heavy time. It all went down during that '95-'96 season when Kelly and I were number one and two in the world. It was heavy. There was like heavy rivalry going on and we were making a record and it was time consuming.... So much time and so much money trying to make the record. It was so eye opening. I consider myself to be pretty new to the whole music scene, and to be thrown in with all these guys (producers and studio musicians) that were so broad and so talented, it was crazy. The songs we wrote and the record we made, I'm super stoked with it. It's something I'll have for the rest of my life.” Today, Rob gives a simple explanation of why the band broke up: “We took a break,” Rob e-mailed. “We would rather go surfing.”
The music vein still runs through Rob’s life. His website has the Shelter surf movie soundtrack on loop with friends like Jack Johnson and Ben Harper gently singing out while Rob plugs the music of Tim Curran and The White Buffalo. Through his foundation, Rob gives young kids the opportunity to play music or surf and helps make the ocean a little bit cleaner for future generations. Who knows? Maybe there is a mini Machado running around one of his annual charity surf days emulating him the way he did Tom Curren…
*Some facts pulled from Kelly Slater’s book PIPE DREAMS: a surfer’s journey
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