Looking at Reef Heazlewood, I can’t help thinking of a few other Aussie goofy-footers. With the lean limbs and Billabong sticker plastered across the nose, a young Cansdell comes to mind—the same fast energy down-the-line. Then there’s Mitch Coleborne, who smashed the junior series apart a bit over a decade ago, hesitated with his career, and has failed to qualify since, even though his surfing would please the judges no end. Finally, there’s something about the kid’s swift but silent rise that reminds me of Connor O’Leary’s mercy dash to qualification.
Despite these reminisces, from what I’ve found of Reef online and through our brief email exchanges, he’s quite happy to be his own person. He’s proud to be from the Sunny Coast. He wants a world title but also wants to give back somehow. He can spell and seems both polite and professional.
In short, Mama and Papa Heazlewood have raised a good one.
But like Cansdell, Coleborne and O’Leary before him, Reef’s ambition is to get on the world tour. He’s got the Australasian Junior Series title, he’s the got backing of a major sponsor—he might as well make the most of it. And at nineteen, with that cushy old under-20s junior circuit no longer around, he’s having to make a serious charge at it.
Which is good in a way. He doesn’t fit the image of your ultra-cool freesurfer.
So far it’s going solid. He currently sits 13th on the QS rankings, just behind Callinan, Freestone and Mikey Wright. (Hopefully they all get through and we get a good injection of skippys back on the tour.) He tore through the US Open trials at Huntington and out-grovelled the best to make it just shy of the quarters. He made the semis at the Manly 6,000, which is another keeper. He went in the Volcom Pipe Pro back in January and fell out early but kudos to the kid for being there. A couple more results and he could be on tour next year, catching us all off-guard.
If you haven’t seen Reef surf, check out the new Tracks clip, The Realm. He’s the tall, young goofy-footer. He holds his own. In pumping Indo waves, among a boatload of surfers in various stages of their careers, he’s outshined by only Davey Cathels and Matt Meola.
And those guys have been around a lot longer.
Time will tell what happens and it’s not always favourable. Cansdell’s career was far too abbreviated. Coleborne’s never fully flowered. O’Leary knocked us on our arses last year but already he’s in a spot of trouble. Can Reef Heazlewood qualify for the world tour? Can he survive there once he makes it?
No idea.
But he’s surfing good and getting results, and they’re the only two ways to go about it.