"My first big-wave board was made by Bob Shepard, a beautiful balsa gun," recalled Strauch. "It was 10'4" and I was 14, I think. I remember going out to Sunset for the very first time on it. We were so limited. It was like riding a plank or a sled that you had limited control on. The key was to use that inertia to your advantage. Most of the guys would take off, angle it, and then lose control. I found the most effective way to ride those boards at the time was not to angle, but to go straight down and turn. If you had a narrow enough tail, you could come off of the bottom and make a long section." "I remember seeing him at Sunset," recalled Gerry Lopez of Strauch, "fading so that he was almost going left, lying down all the way to the bottom and then just doing this huge bottom turn, and walking up. And this was on a terrible, heavy plank." "A lot of people don't know that Paul Strauch was actually a goofy foot," Barry Kaniaupuni remembered. "In fact, he won the Makaha event one year in big surf as a goofy foot. He was the best surfer in the world. Nobody else was even close· And his bottom turn was just the most radical. The most radical! He had a balsa-redwood that he flipped around like it weighed ten pounds. I mean, he was the first to go down and really crank a turn, and the way he'd accelerate! He made that thing talk, play music." "Did you discover that type of turn on your own, or had you seen anyone else do it?" Chris Ahrens asked Strauch. "No, I had never seen anyone to the point of going straight down and then returning. You went real fast, increasing speed like a skier. Later on, Barry Kaniaupuni would do that very well. He was kind of forced into that position because he was riding such narrow boards. That became an effective way to ride larger surf."

"He had more style than anyone in any size surf, and he could ride anything," recalled Gerry Lopez who was just starting out at the time. "When the surf was big, he really stood out. Takayama, Hemmings, Hynson, Butch; they were all really great surfers. But Paul Strauch was on a whole different level from any of them. He was on a level with Phil Edwards. Actually I'd say, from what I saw, he was better than Phil Edwards. No question. Just the best guy everywhere he went. Left, right, big waves, small waves. All of it!" Strauch said that, as a kid, he surfed "So much so that my father used to remind me that long before he came onto this planet there were waves, and throughout my lifetime there would always be waves, and that there was a time and a place for everything. (laughter)" You know how it is, as surfers, we never want to miss a good swell. "Oh God, yeah," Strauch said. "I used to take pepper, shove it up my nose, and then go to the school infirmary. It took about six minutes to get the full effect. By then my eyes had reddened and swollen up. It looked like I had this horrible contagious disease. The nurse would say 'We're calling home.' I would always get them to realize that there was nobody there, and tell them that I would go straight home. (laughter) Then I would get on the bus, and take a detour, straight to the beach. (laughter)" "As a sophomore at Punaho High Scool," Strauch recalled of a memorable time away from school, "I went to Maui for Christmas vacation with Jan Lee, Harlan Cadeena, Michael Tongg, Eric Romanchak and two other friends. We drove to the end of this dirt road, past these pineapple fields to a place we had just heard of called Honolua Bay. It was like five feet to 10 feet. I still have the eight millimeter film of it. "Jan Lee had lost his board one night, and it had gone into the cave. When we paddled out, a little piece of his board, about six inches of it, floated out. (Laughter) He didn't want to go in to get the rest of the board, the cave had this ominous look to it, and we didn't know how deep it was. The waves were so nice there. Perfect, and is was just us."

Paul Strauch - Changing Direction Through Weight Displacement

Asked about the contributing factors to his style, Strauch responded, "I'd have to say that there were several surfers, but it wasn't until the late '50s that I was able to witness Phil Edwards and Dewey Weber surfing, when they came over to Hawaii with Bud Browne in 1958. They had been here before that, but I never had a chance to see them until then. I was really impressed, particularly with Dewey Weber. I mean, Phil had a tremendous grace, and it was amazing how he could ride the tail of the board, and control it so well, and then use the whole board. "Dewey had a lot more hand motion and upper torso motion, swivel of the hips and things. There were a couple of Hawaiian surfers who surfed somewhat similar (to Weber) but they were more subtle. A guy named Squirly Carvalho was very good at that type of surfing." "Without a doubt," Strauch continued, "Phil Edwards and Dewey Weber" were the best surfers of his era, as far as he was concerned. "They were so far ahead of everybody else, so much finesse. My style is patterned after that, to be able to get the board to change directions through weight displacement. I used to watch Phil going left at Haleiwa. He'd take off and angle to the right, and as he was about three quarters of the way down the wave, he'd slid the board out, walk toward the tail, with his foot on the left rail. It acted like a fulcrum. He'd pivot, and turn, and as he swung the board around on its inside edge, he'd follow it, walking forward. The board would then level off and he'd go to the nose. He'd move off the nose, and then sort of kick the board out, and come back with another bottom turn. It was awesome to me." "At Makaha," continued Strauch, "Dewey would turn the tailblock with his arms up over his head, and his weight back. He'd do these real heavy swivel turns using lots of hip and upper torso movement. The board had a delayed reaction to his upper torso. His body was always ahead of his board. Then he'd run up to the nose and do a nose stall. He had a funny way of looking away from the wave as he rode up; he never looked straight ahead. Really stylish maneuvers from Dewey, and the bottom maneuvers from Phil." "And of course George Downing," Stauch added. "I don't think that anybody could surf big Makaha or Laniakea as well as George. He took me out to Laniakea several times when I was younger. Once it was just solid whitewater, right through the break. He'd say, 'Let's go,' and I'd say, 'There's no way we're going to get out.' It was breaking so far out, you could look out and see Himalayas breaking, massive. We went right through the break in the rip. It was really spooky out there, whitewater all over. You're not sure if you're in an impact area, there was solid whitewater, and George sits up and says, 'Okay, we're in the lineup.' I said, 'What the hell are you talking about?' He said, 'Look outside.' It was just crashing out there, and he says, 'No, it will be fine here, and this is where we can catch it.' Sure enough, the whitewater would stop maybe 20 yards outside of us, and reform right where we were, and there was maybe a 50 yard space where we could take off. You'd catch one wave, ride it, and then you'd have to repeat the process again. He was so cool. He passed on all these things to me when I was young, and I never forgot them. You have to know these things. There's no other way to work through an afternoon of riding big waves without just getting hammered."

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