When Matt Archbold started surfing back in 1979, at age 11, the world had no concept that it was about to witness one of the most explosive surfers to ever have set foot on a surfboard. With a career spanning nearly three decades, Archy is today considered to be the most successful free surfer of all time, and one of the originators of high performance surfing. As Martin Potter was setting the stage globally for high performance surfing in the early 80's, a young crew, led by Archy out of San Clemente was about to blow the roof off of surfing... From dropping out of High School as a Freshman at age 15 and turning pro, to becoming the poster child for surf clothing giant MCD, Archy's young life had not a dull moment to it. After struggling with competitive surfing for the next five years and having some success winning a handful of Bud Tour events, Archy quickly leant that pro surfings' '3 turns to the beach' format wasn't for him. Deciding to set out on a fairly new frontier, 'free surfing', Archy got paid simply to go out and get photos, something that had not been done before then. In his early 20's, his name became synonymous with the legendary surf spot known as 'Off the Wall' all the while riding shorter boarders in bigger waves, something that most had never done or even dreamt of doing. Archy's ariel attack in the water and explosive surfing revolutionized what we view as high performance surfing today.