Taj Burrow, one of Get Wet’s favourite surfers ended his career yesterday with an epic wave in the WSL Fiji Pro. After 19 years in the tour, the Western Australian surfed his last heat at Fiji with amazing conditions. Getting barrels at Cloudbreak in front of your friends cheering for you from the channel, Is definitely the best way to finish your career.

Taj was close to getting a perfect heat by scoring 18.60 over 20 points. He was beaten by John John Florence (best tube rider in the world) by a minuscule margin of 0.16 points. While most surfers would have been upset with the loss, Taj was smiling and just enjoying the surf and said “I couldn’t pick a better way to finish my career… That was one of the best heats of my life. The waves were so sick and I just wanted to get barrelled. I wasn’t too worried about the result.”

This legend leaves a great legacy to surfing with his innovative power surfing and air game… he literally created new manoeuvres! He also leaves us with a few of the greatest surf movies of all times. Sabotaj (2000), Montaj (2002) and Taj Burrow’s Fair Bits (2005) are larger than life masterpieces that have been and probably will keep inspiring generations of surfers. He is also working with groms and hosting the ‘Taj Small Fries’ junior surfing competition since 2005.

On the competitive side, Taj has also been full of great achievements like being the youngest surfer to win a national event, Rookie of the year (1998) and two times World Tour runner up (1999, 2007). When he was asked about not getting a world title, he replied: “I feel like I have won the world title, I am so happy”. At the end of the day, a world title doesn’t make you the best surfer. As Phil Edwards once said, “The best surfer out there is the one having the most fun.”

We will be back next week with more exciting news about the surfing work. See you in the water!