If you were to go surfing with The Bard, ‘ole Shakespeare might — after slotting pig dog into a tube and finishing off the section with a tail high air revo – ponder the question: ‘To claim, or not to claim?’ Rather than bottle up all those emotions, I bet that William ‘Bill’ Shakespeare would “take arms against a sea” and throw down the iconic Andy Irons shotgun claim. 

Claims are a hotly contested topic in the world of surfing. Defined in Matt Warshaw’s Encyclopedia of Surfing as, “An expressive physical gesture or flourish, usually made at the end of an especially well-ridden wave; similar to a fist-pump in tennis or an end zone dance in football,” claims showcase the energy of the moment. 

O’Neill team rider Shaun Burns breaks down claims into two categories: from the heart and for the score. “Claims are a way to express emotional style,” says Burns. “They are rad when it’s the wave of the season/year but in events they can seem shallow and more for the judges than the surfer themselves.” 

On one end, claims make surfing fun. The raw product of emotion brings more eyes to surfing — whether they are pre-planned salutes like the Irons shotgun or a spontaneous expression of surprise in the wake of a great accomplishment, like Carissa Moore’s claim after stomping the best air ever landed in women’s comp. 

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Or who could forget Gabriel Medina’s ode to the modern shrug emoji 🤷‍♂️  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ after landing surfing’s first backflip in competition. 

On the other side of the coin, a claims can be thrown down in the hope that it manipulates the judges to give the surfer the score. “If you claim a 6 or a 7 — even an 8 — you’re counter productive. They’re gonna score you half a point less,” says ___. 

Barron Mamiya took the opposite approach and found success in this year’s Hurley Pro at Sunset Beach. Needing a 3.30 in the dying moments of the semifinal, Mamiya caught a minor wave and milked the ride all the way in for about 6 turns. He did not claim it. He got the score and went onto win the event. 

But that’s not always the case. 

A 2019 academic study on surf claims found that both judges and regular viewers — when shown the same surfing performance, one with a claim at the end and one without — both parties tended to favor the claim. “There’s been claims that have got the score,” says Lakey Peterson. Julian Wilson found such fortune in 2016 when he took a last minute win in a heat after claiming the wave with the classic finger snap in the middle of the ride. 

You might wonder where to look for inspiration when it comes to surf claims. If you want to go big, Brazilians like Italo and Gabby lead the charge. Somewhere in the middle lies John-John Florence’s “no-claim” claim — where the Hawaiian stands tall, arms down and defiant after being spat out of a throttling Tahitian or North Shore tube. 

But if you want to tap into the future of claims, look no further than Venturian Eithan Osborne. The beloved prodigy of Dane Reynolds uses a mix of saucy hand gestures, fly-away board punch outs, and tantrum driven emotions that inject some genuine comic relief, sans self-regard. 

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In the water, claims certainly seem to possess different emotional impact depending on the situation and the motivation. Pro surfers seem to have a mixed bag of opinions. Pipe Master-cum-freesurfer Jamie O’Brien sums it up neatly when saying, “I feel like every surfer claims waves. They just have different ways to do it. It’s just good energy and a good feeling and people express themselves differently. I don’t really care.” 

At the end of the day we fans watch surfers to be entertained. I say, let them claim.