Early Life:
Robert Young was born in Sydney, 1947, raised in Collaroy, and because of his small size became known as “Gnat.” He won the Australian Surfing Championships in 1963. He finished second place in the 1965 World Championships.
In mid-1966, Nat Young, Bob McTavish, and George Greenough led a new “involvement” approach to surfing. It focused on riding waves radically deep in the curl with maximum speed. They also collaborated on Nat’s self-shaped “Magic Sam,” a thin railed 9’4” square tail with a flexible swept-back fin designed by Greenough. The board is often described as a link between the longboard and the shortboard.
World Champion:
Nat Young traveled to San Diego in 1966 and won the World Surfing Championships. A year later Young and Bob Mctavish packed even shorter “vee-bottom boards” for Hawaii where their surfing was captured for the movie The Hot Generation, which changed the direction of surfing and influenced young surfers everywhere.
Nat Young went on to win several more events in Hawaii and Australia before temporarily quitting shortboard competition and retiring to the country. Nat returned to shortboard competition in 1974, switched to riding longboards in the 1980’s, and won four world titles by 1990.
