Days of Futures Past: Phil Roberts’ influence on the look of today’s wave pools

Joaquín Lozada and Ezequiel Fernandez Lobo from La Ola Group, based in Argentina, are spearheading a technology that uses underwater air cannons to generate surf. The company plans to build their first wave pool adjacent a famous church just outside of Buenos Aires. If successful, their technology will rub shoulders with some of the major players in the highly competitive wave generation game.

There are only a handful of people on the planet with as much wave design experience as Cheyne Magnusson. He’s part of an obsessed, laser-focused elite squad of wave designers - individuals who can take a multi-million dollar piece of equipment and shape waves. His journey started nearly a decade ago when he was at Body Glove and the boss asked, “what can we do with wave pools?” He went on to shape the wave program at Waco, create the Palm Springs Surf Club and now, as we learned, branch out into more new projects (spoiler alert, he names locations). We joined him in Palm Springs on location at the newly re-opened Palm Springs Surf Club.

Jessica Mahoney’s professional life has crossed paths with WavePoolMag a few times now, first at ADG and later as COO at Surf Park Summit. Over the years, she has amassed a databank of knowledge in the industry from the tech side to the consumer side and all points in between. We had a nice long chat with Jessica to discover what wave pool operators can do to improve their business through facility offerings, amenities, seasonality planning, branding, and much more. Dig in for an accelerated learning package in this latest WavePoolMag podcast.

Philip Roberts is always in close orbit to surfing’s greatest inventors. Mentored by water park guru Dick Croul (Wild Rivers) he’s brought the ideation of Tom Lochtefeld to life while acting as the grounding cable for Boogie Board inventor Tom Morey. In the late ‘80s, Surfer Mag offered him a project to paint, as they put it, “the future of surfing.” The gig was for an illustrator to bring a floating reef concept to life. From there he expanded into futuristic wave pool designs, much of which has become the blueprint for concepts we still see today. We wanted to pick Phil's brain to learn how he consciously or unconsciously seeded the future look of surf parks.

John Philbin’s best-known movie parts were in Children of the Corn, Tombstone, Point Break and, of course, The North Shore - that classic 1980s film about an Arizona wave pooler who goes to Hawaii. In this podcast, John talks about how he landed the role of Turtle (hint: he had to audition 7 times) and the movie’s lasting effect on a generation. As a core surfer he’s also well-placed to measure changes to surfing and the “life” many have sacrificed so much to be a part of and speak to how wave pools, surfing and their overall perception have shifted within popular culture. “You don't you don't have to be a bum to be a surfer anymore. I was telling my friends that you can be rich and be a surfer. It's a thing that's happened. The game is out man, but it used to be like, “yeah, I'm going to sacrifice everything in my life for this feeling of riding energy in the water.” And that's what it used to be like when I was a kid. You used to have to be a lifeguard or a firefighter to be a surfer. Now, you can put in hours and be a CEO of a company and be a surfer. You look at Mark Zuckerberg or someone and you're like, fuck, you know? Are you kidding me? Yeah. The richest man in the world, what he really wants to do is ride a wave because he’s discovered what we’ve known all along.”

There’s a mantra in the wave pool space that the development, opening and operation of parks will get easier as more facilities open up. That’s why the unveiling of URBNSURF Sydney is a pretty big deal. The launch makes the URBNSURF group the only entity to have two surf parks in operation. We wanted to find out if the company simply copy/pasted Melbourne to a new location or if they had to start from scratch. Was it easier this time around? We spoke with the one person most qualified to answer this question, URBNSURF Sydney GM Shaun Hutchinson.

Steven Nauwelaerts of AllWaves refers to competitors as "collegues," a refreshing take in a sector that grows more competitive each day. Steven has a unique view of the space. He spent years doing the one thing that might be more difficult than creating surfable waves in a confined pool – extrancting energy from ocean waves. Steven is one of the few people to turn the equation on its head and make the transition from wave farmer to wave pooler. Perhaps it’s this ability to see waves in all their forms that allows a higher-up view of the surf park space. Steven’s design AllWaves lit up global news feeds last month with the unveiling of his technology in Belgium. WavePoolMag was there to test out the new pillow technology and learn more about this very different wave generation system.

The first thing we noticed at URBNSURF Sydney was that everyone wore a name badge. “Dude maintaining the pool” now has a name (it’s Keith by the way.) This simple customer experience measure hints at the kind of changes Jennifer Vandekreeke has in mind for Australia’s premier surf park business. In her previous roles, she drove growth for travel and leisure companies, notably Carnival Cruise Lines. Having taken the reins from Damon Tudor, we were curious to find out how Jenn’s experience making big, giant boats profitable (hint: wave pools are also just big, expensive pieces of machinery as well) parlay into the world of surf parks.

I'm at the construction site at o2 SURFTOWN MUC with Michi Mohr. He's a large, intimidating figure with thick hands and a disarming smile - warm, sincere and just a tad goofy. We walk around the construction site while wave pool maker Endless Surf runs a multitude of tests. Michi stops to pick up an empty box for the recycling bin, cleans up an errant Firewire demo board and eyes the area for other disarray. But it's a construction site. I mean the park isn't even completed and here's Michi making things as orderly as possible which, if we're being honest, isn't possible at this point in time. I wanted to find out why this surfer, who left Bavaria decades ago to chase waves around the world, had returned to Munich to become Chief Surfing Officer and how his way of running things will work here at a wave pool just a stone's throw from the airport.

Edwin van Viegen is leading a wave pool development in the center of Europe's busiest port city, Rotterdam. He has been working on this project for several years and experienced the usual surf park ups and downs. But this wave pool, Rif010 (pronounced riff-ten) has the unbridled support of major city planners and various local government agencies - a major win for any project. As such, it's moved relatively quickly, at least by European bureaucratic standards, to cross the finish line once it opens this summer. We wanted to find out how a brave idea like building a wave pool in downtown Rotterdam came to be. Edwin was gracious enough to share his story.