These days, core lord is a term applied liberally. But long before it became shorthand for a certain kind of surfer, there were characters who embodied the spirit without ever needing the label.
Generations of Core revisits those original characters through the Tracks archives, exploring the personalities, experiences and attitudes that made them surfing’s enduring anti-establishment heroes.
Martin Potter was one of the originals. Before aerials became commonplace and progressive surfing was accepted by the establishment, Pottz was already taking to the skies – and fighting a system that wasn’t quite ready for him.
Check out our feature on Pottz from Issue 603 below.
Truly great sporting moments have an ability to transcend generations and remain a topic of spirited discussion in pubs and at office water coolers or backyard barbies for decades to come – the ‘Miracle on Ice’, the ‘Thrilla in Manila’, ‘The Shot’ by Michael Jordan, Shane Warne’s ‘Ball of the Century’ at Old Trafford … the list goes on.
For the generation of grommets seeking to whet their insatiable surf appetites in the pre-internet 80s and early 90s when surf news was restricted to magazines and the occasional surf film at your local cinema (or maybe a five-minute segment from Ken Sutcliffe on ‘Wide World of Sports’ there are a few moments that really stand out – Simon Anderson unveiling the thruster at a bombing Bells Beach in the Easter of 1980, the flash of brilliant pink as Tom Carroll laid into the jaw-dropping ‘snap heard round the world’ under a heaving lip during the ‘91 Pipeline Masters, and raise the topic of the birth of aerials with any surf-obsessed Gen-Xer and almost all will recall with giddy delight spying that fabled magazine cover on the newsagent shelves for the first time.
Which version you saw depends on which part of the world you were in. In Australia it was Dean Wilmott’s cover of Tracks in 1987, while in America it was the cover of ‘Surfing’ a few years earlier in the summer of ’84 but there it was in all its glory. The purple and green Blue Hawaii, or the Town & Country yin-yang bathed in decade-defining green and gold spray, sailing through the air, piloted by British-born South African wunderkind Martin Potter.
Regardless of which continent you were in, the impact was immediate and significant. There could be little doubt that this was a defining moment in the history of the sport. Surfing had suddenly changed forever. And this wasn’t just some wild kick out or chop-hop. Potter looked poised, in control. This was actual flight, in the Wright Brothers sense of the word, breaking free from the shackles of gravity, albeit momentarily, with a view to making a safe landing at some distant point down the line.
Grommethood imaginations ran wild. The door to a whole new world of possibilities had suddenly been booted open, and it was Pottz who did it. Whilst he may not have been alone, indeed there were a handful of Pottz’s contemporaries who had begun to take to the skies, he was certainly among the first and it was these cover shots that had brought it to the masses.
Among those with a distinct memory of the events leading up to this monumental occasion are none other than 1977 World Champion and pro-surfing pioneer, Shaun Tomson.
“Martin changed surfing”, he says. “I saw the moment on the beach with Tom Carroll at Rocky Point. We’d heard a little bit of a push about aerials but nothing functional, nothing progressive, nothing real. Martin was riding a Glenn Minami rounded pin tail thruster. I see him driving across Rocky Rights fast, jams into this bottom turn and busts an air, launches about three or four feet above the surface of the water and then cleanly lands it. Not a moment of hesitation. It was just perfectly fluid. My mouth dropped. I looked at Tom and he looked at me and we could see that was the future and Martin was going to be leading the sport”.
Born in the most unlikely of places for a professional surfer, two-year-old Martin’s father, Daniel, left Blyth in England’s Northumberland region when an offer for a pipe-fitting job took the family to the African continent for what was, initially, going to be, “A year at the most”, according to Pottz.
“My parents fell in love with the climate. We were way inland, nowhere near the ocean. I grew up in the middle of South Africa speaking Afrikaans at school. It was pretty tough in the beginning because I was like the foreign kid in amongst all these South Africans”.
Daniel, a retired Second Division soccer player for Newcastle United in England, possessed a competitive nature and athleticism that was evident early on in his son. “I grew up with a ball on my foot”, says Pottz. “That’s pretty much what I was meant to be, a competitive soccer player. I played up until I was about 16. I was really good. I played centre forward (and) scored a lot of goals”.
Pottz also displayed exceptional athletic abilities in the pool, setting long-standing school records for butterfly and breaststroke.
When Pottz was nine years old, Daniel moved the family to the unrecognised country of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and inadvertently, smack bang into the middle of a political shitstorm and a state of racial tension and civil unrest that would eventually escalate into all-out war.
Known as the Rhodesian Bush War (or the Zimbabwean War of Liberation), the conflict would pit the white minority-led government of Ian Smith against two communist-funded and trained black guerilla militant groups.
The fighting resulted in the deaths of around 20,000 people and caused untold suffering for Rhodesia’s civilian population (including the shooting down of two civilian aircraft using Soviet SA-7 surface-to-air-missiles by the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army guerilla faction).
With the fear of conscription for his oldest son (Martin’s brother Darren) hanging over his head, and the massacre of civilians growing closer to home, Daniel made the hasty decision to relocate the family once more.
“All hell was breaking loose”, says Pottz. “The Prime Minister said, ‘if you’re white I’d get the fuck out of here now’ so we packed as much as we could carry in our car and we drove all the way to South Africa’.
“We drove over the hill and my dad said, ‘you’re going to see the biggest swimming pool in the world’ and we saw the ocean for the first time”, recalls Pottz with great fondness. “My brother and I were standing on the coastline of Durban, and we saw this guy ride a wave and we just went ‘shit, we’ve got to do that’. That was the beginning, we started surfing on the weekends because we still lived away from the coast. Then my parents got divorced and my mum moved down on the beachfront and that was when I really got stuck into it”.
Soon surfing would come to dominate Pottz’s young life, at the expense of virtually everything else. “The more I got into surfing the less I wanted to play soccer, much to the disappointment of my dad. He didn’t talk to me for a while when I did that”, he laughs.
When asked how much the turmoil of his parents’ divorce and the weight of his father’s sporting expectations drove his surfing ambitions, Pottz’s defiant nature begins to shine through. “It was kind of like, I’ll show you”, he says. “It was one of those things. When I got out in the water it was like I left everything back on the beach. When you surf, what you think about is what you’re looking at. Focus on the waves. And the more I surfed, the better I felt. I just tried to spend as much time in the water as I possibly could”.
“Swimming obviously helped because I wasn’t scared of the water. Back then we didn’t have leg-ropes. My brother and I would surf and if you fell off your go was over. He’d grab the board and that was it, so I made sure I didn’t fall off. That was a big motivation for me”.
While the ocean may have provided the ultimate meditative respite from the daily struggles of family life, Pottz’s restless spirit and competitive nature soon drew him towards the world of competition surfing.
“Growing up playing competitive soccer you learn a lot about yourself and that really did help once I got into that competitive arena. I started surfing when I was 10 (and) turned pro when I was 15 so I picked it up pretty quick”. Pottz says turning professional happened, “Purely by accident”.
“I was surfing in the amateur division in South Africa, and I pretty much won everything. It was like I was going backwards if I kept doing that (so) I got my springbok colours representing South Africa. But because I was still a British citizen, they weren’t going to let me compete because I wasn’t a South African citizen. There was a big controversy on whether or not they should let me compete as part of the South African team even though they let me compete through everything else. There was a big uproar (but) they ended up letting me do it. We went over to California. I surfed against Tom Curren in the NSSA, smashed that out, won that one. That was like ‘fuck you guys. Then I went to Florida and won that one as well. So, we had a pretty successful campaign over in America”, he says, understatedly.
“We came back to South Africa and went ‘well that’s as high as I’m going to go in the amateur division. What’s the next step?’ Next step is turning pro. I had a long talk with my mum. She didn’t want me to. She was always saying ‘you’re too young’ and I said ‘just give me a go. If I don’t prove myself, I’ll go back into the amateur division and spend a few more years doing that until I’m old enough’. I turned pro. Everyone was laughing at me, ‘this little kid’s turning pro, who does he think he is?’ I surfed in the very first pro event in East London. All the top pros in South Africa were there including Shaun. I made it all the way through to the final and ended up beating Shaun in the final”, says Pottz with obvious glee.
Similar to that jaw-dropping moment on the beach at Rocky Point a few years later, Tomson vividly recalls this first encounter with the-then teenaged Pottz in East London.
“My father had written me a letter in 1981”, he recalls. “In those days you would write letters. My dad had a surf shop in Durban, and he wrote to me about this kid he’d seen surfing at a beach south of the Bay of Plenty. He said, ‘This kid’s going to be amazing’. Then I met Martin when he was competing against me in East London. He was riding a little green Spider Murphy twin fin. We were in the finals together. Martin smoked me”.
Not only had Pottz made it into the final of his first ever professional event, but he had convincingly vanquished the elder statesman of South African surfing at the peak of his national celebrity.
“Then the Gunston 500 was coming up”, recalls Tomson. “I competed against him, and he smoked me again which was a big deal because I was the known guy. The big name in South Africa. And I went ‘wow, this kid is fantastic’. I had a lot of recognition. I was one of the few athletes that could compete internationally and had won the World Title, and a lot of people knew me beyond just surfers so it was quite a sensation”.
“He was like the God”, acknowledges Pottz. “He’d won the Gunston six times. He was everyone’s hero including mine. And it was like ‘how dare you beat Shaun’. Everyone fucking didn’t talk too much to me after that”, he laughs.
While there can be little doubt that Pottz’s success in the contest arena can largely be attributed to a unique natural talent and an inherent competitiveness, it is difficult to ignore the ever-present thread of defiance weaved throughout his story; a raw edge that may have provided the extra spark needed to fuel his early dominance.
The same ,“Fuck you, I’ll show you”, attitude, which drove him once he turned his back on a pre-ordained soccer career was clearly also levelled at the naysayers who insisted that a kid with a British passport shouldn’t be allowed to represent South Africa as he systematically dismantled his NSSA opponents one by one.
In a similar vein, it could be said that those competitors who underestimated and sneered at this pubescent newcomer to the world of professional surfing may have unwittingly sealed their own fate. Giving Pottz something to prove appears a dangerous prospect for anyone who dare oppose him.
“I watched him surf and I went ‘wow, this kid is just mind-blowing’”, says Tomson. “He was young, but he was so fast, so powerful. He inspired me and I went ‘wow man, I gotta chase this kid down’. I was determined to smash him next time. He was an incredible inspiration to me”.
In a lot of ways Pottz’s arrival may have heralded a changing of the old guard, as the tribal Elders who once stood at the vanguard of professional surfing slowly began to make way for the new generation and the dawn of a new era in professional surfing, and young Potter had fired a shot across the bow by taking down the champ, twice, on his home turf.
Pottz hit the world tour at the age of just 16. Typically defiant, he elected to surf under a British flag and insists that the iconic green and gold spray job on his surfboards were because, “Those were my favourite colours”, using a design he came up with scribbling on a notepad in school, and did not indicate any allegiance to South Africa.
Pottz’s impact on tour was immediate. “I got second in my first two events. I lost to Cheyne Horan and Mark Richards who, at that time, were duelling for World Titles. At that stage, the only two guys that could beat me was those two. That’s how I felt in my mind”.
Despite his confidence in the water, Pottz admits that being a 16-year-old on tour was a fairly daunting prospect. “I remember being absolutely shit scared. You’re out of your comfort zone. You rock up to the airport obviously too young to hire a car. I didn’t even have a licence, so I’d grab my boards, walk outside and watch all the guys drive past me in their hire cars and then have to work out how to get from Rio airport to Copacabana and check into a hotel, and I didn’t know where it was. Watching those guys drive past me and not want to give me a lift, that just fuelled the fire even more. Every time I surfed against them, I’d go ‘remember that time you drove past me? Fuck you, I’m going to kick your arse today’”.
Armed with an undeniable talent and an unrivalled killer instinct, there were many, like Shaun Tomson, who believed that Martin Potter hoisting a World Title trophy was merely a matter of time. But nine years on tour was probably longer than most would have expected. Ironically, Pottz believes that it may have been his radical, progressive approach to surfing, and particularly aerials, that prevented him from winning a World Title sooner.
“My forte was speed. Growing up I started on single fins and then watched Mark Richards on an absolute tear with a twin fin. Spider Murphy, the head shaper for a company called ‘Safari Surfboards’ in South Africa started doing Mark Richards models. I just went “I’ve got to get myself on one of these things and from that day on it was like I had another gear. Racing down the line, when the wave closed out, I would do that big fly kick out that I loved to do and then one day, I just mistimed it, and it boosted me back towards the shore. I ate shit and came up and that lightbulb went off. For me it was a functional manoeuvre because you could connect a section. Instead of going down and around it, I was thinking I could go up and over it”.
“It took a while to get them down before I was confident to do them in a competition situation”, he says. “Maybe it took me so long to win a World Title because I was doing that (aerials), but the judges were only considering it as one manoeuvre. The way the system was back then, I would take off on a wave, race down the line and do a six-foot air and land it and they’d go ‘6.5’ because that’s the most they could give me for one manoeuvre”.
“I was fighting the system for nine years. I was going ‘I’m not going to change. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing’. I had a big following outside of the competitive arena. Magazines wanted more photos of me (performing aerials), so it was working on one side, but not on the other. Over a period of time, I realised if I want to win a World Title I’ve got to conform somewhat to the system. In 1989 I did less airs and got bigger scores.”
There’s some undeniable irony in this part of Pottz’s story. As surfing’s ultimate non-conformer he was faced with an internal struggle when he recognised that, in order to achieve the ultimate success, he was going to have to conform, something that didn’t sit easy with him.
“It became apparent to me that they didn’t want this (aerial) manoeuvre. They wanted me to conform. They wanted me to be put in that box of professional surfing and make me do what they want. I kept the board in the water and gave them what they wanted, and they couldn’t deny me. It’s such a structured thing so you had to somewhat conform. So, I did. It was definitely hard to do. I found that 1989 year quite boring. I did a lot of boring surfing”.
While Pottz may have put the progressive surfing on ice for a while, Shaun Tomson’s recollection is of surfing that was anything but boring. “My last year on tour was 1989, the year Pottz won the title”, he says. “He was so far ahead he was over the horizon. The surfing he did that year was mind-blowing. It all came together. He led from start to finish and won the title by the biggest margin”.
Whilst it is hard to imagine Pottz toeing the line and compromising his radical surfing, even in this act of conformity there is an omnipresent hint of contempt.
“Derek Hynde wrote a magazine article on the top 15 guys winning a World Title and (for me) he wrote ‘possibility, no chance’, says Pottz. “That was a little bit of fuel, and a lot of my peers were saying ‘he’s too radical, he falls off too much, he’ll never win a World Title’.
These flames were further fanned by an article in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ after Pottz started the season in blistering form, winning the first five events on the trot. “Damien Hardman and Barton Lynch said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll catch him cause when the going gets tough the tough will get going’. You’re fuelling the fire. What the fuck are you doing? Don’t poke the bear”, he laughs.
After realising the ultimate success in ’89, Pottz couldn’t restrain his surfing for long and his rebellious nature soon reclaimed its rightful place at the helm. “In 1990 I went back to my old ways”. He dropped down the ASP rankings and, after a further seven years on tour, he was never able to realise the same level of success again.
competitors.
“I retired in 1996. By then I’d lost the eye of the tiger. I finished number 10 in the world. I won an event, so I still had the ability, but I was losing the drive. It felt like I was getting too far away from why I started surfing. I started getting really upset with not being able to perform at a high level all the time, so I was not enjoying it anymore. This whole professional thing was just killing why I started surfing in the first place”.
Pottz soon discovered life after competitive surfing and, with it, a renewed love for the sport that he’d once dominated.
“When I retired in ‘96, that love came back. That joy of riding waves and going on surf trips. We went to the Mentawai’s with Tom (Carroll) and Ross (Clarke-Jones), and we found some amazing waves and I just went ‘holy shit, this is what it’s all about’. I was still sponsored by Gotcha. I went to Michael Tomson, and I said, ‘I’m losing the fire, but I still want to surf and be that image I’d created for Gotcha and for myself and still maintain some sort of presence in the world of surfing and he said, ‘no worries, you’re going to be more valuable to us retired than on tour’. But he offered me a quarter of what I was making which really was a poke in the eye because I’d done so much for that company so I turned around and said, ‘it looks like you need the money more than I do mate so you can stick it up your arse’. That was the last of me and Gotcha which was a shame”.
A lot has been written about Shaun’s cousin, Michael Tompson, his legendary cocaine habit, and his company’s meteoric rise (and almost equally rapid demise), but the hint of sadness in Pottz’s voice suggests the ‘shame’ that he is referring to has more to do with friendship than it does allegiance to a surf company.
“It was sad (but) we maintained a friendship for a very long time. I moved to France in 1999. He wanted to start Gotcha back up over there, so I helped him get that going so we kind of rekindled our relationship. We did spend a lot of time together before he passed away (in 2020)”.
After a brief period of surf coaching and some brand ambassador work for some lesser-known surf brands, Pottz was eventually picked up by Quiksilver; a move which launched the next big chapter in his surf career.
“This was right when the Internet had kicked off. They wanted me to do broadcasting for their events. I started working alongside John Shimooka and Peter Mel. I did a lot of years with Quiksilver, and the WSL were travelling around looking at how the broadcasts were run, and we had the best one going. When you look at how the WSL broadcasts were run it was me, Peter Mel, Rosey Hodge, it was pretty much all the Quiky guys except Joe Turpel. That was how the whole WSL thing happened, and little did I know how different that was going to be”.
There is a hint of frustration evident in his voice when Pottz reflects on this part of his career, seemingly levelled at the direction the sport was taking and his apparent inability to have an influence in the role that he had been employed in.
“I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong (but) in the beginning it was hard because you were dealing with a lot of corporate guys who come from a non-surfing background, from American football and baseball, coming into the sport and trying to make it look like that (American sport). If you remember back how many ads we used to have, it was killing the rhythm of everything”.
“I kept my toe in surfing. I’d dedicated my life to the sport, so I wanted to maintain some sort of presence in it. I felt like a bit of a Godfather to make sure it was going in the right direction (but) I was banging my head against the wall for seven years with those guys”.
It is hard to find a great deal of love out there for the WSL of the last few years. Ask any surf fan whether the finals format and the decision not to end the year in Hawaii is a mistake and your question will likely be answered with great vitriol, and Pottz appears to be no exception. “Fucking 100% mate. When you watch Carissa Moore, the most dominant surfer for two years running, have one shitty day and lose the World Title, that’s just absolute crap. Finishing at Pipeline for me was always the Super Bowl of surfing. That’s how it should be. ‘You’ve proved yourself all year, now it’s time to really fucking show us what you’ve got kid’. That’s how it’s always been. Shaun Tomson said it perfectly, ‘it’s one thing to rip but you have to rip in Hawaii’. You have to dominate in Hawaii to be the world’s best. You have to compete in two-foot shit all year then go to Hawaii and charge at Pipeline, and Sunset, and Waimea and put that cherry on the top. It’s just a complete stuff up. They are set in their ways. ‘This is the way we’re going to do it, and we don’t really care if you like it or not. This is what’s happening and that’s it’.”
After seven years as one of the signature voices of the WSL broadcasts Pottz made the decision to step away. “I’d been travelling the world since I was 16 years old. I didn’t want to miss any more time with my kids. I was spending six months away from home, travelling economy class, staying in fucking average hotels”, he says.
After many years in the limelight, Pottz’s life these days is decidedly less public. He is living in Victoria, surfing, spending time with his kids, and continuing to defy the doubters by reinventing himself and forging a new career as a trainer in the commercial shipping industry.
“I went back to school and had to educate myself on a whole other thing”, he says. “Very scary and exciting at the same time. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Yes, you can. At the age of 58, I learnt a whole new craft”.
When asked how he continues to find the motivation to push himself into new things even as he approaches the ripe old age of 60, his answer is typical Pottz.
“People give up too easy. Things are hard for a reason. You’ve got to live outside of your comfort zone. You’ve got to work to accomplish things in life. No one’s going to fucking hand you shit”.
As Pottz’s new life leads him towards relative obscurity away from the professional surfing spotlight, he could equally be remembered for his ability to be successful in almost anything he puts his mind to, as much for the restless and competitive spirit that drove him, but his enduring legacy will always be radical surfing that was ahead of its time.
“The guys that I loved were the radical guys”, says Shaun Tomson. “The guys that took chances like Tom Carroll, Pottz, they just lived on the edge, literally and figuratively. They just went for it. Those are the people that changed the sport, those are the people that had incredibly powerful mojo. Martin had mojo man, blazing out of his every pore”.
Read our other episodes of Generations of Core here:
