Troy Elmore has one of the most valuable tools of a contemporary shaper, craftsmanship. An eye for design can be applied to many different mediums but let's focus on shaping for the time being, albeit Troy's talents extend to his multifaceted realm of interests. Couple this unrelenting level of craftsmanship with a level of surfing that is so elite only a handful of historic surfers and contemporaries alike can measure up to. Troy is one of the few surfers out there that can hop on any style of surfboard - be it a longboard, egg, bonzer, shortboard, or fish - and hold his own among the best. Together, Troy's talents both in and out of the ocean, combine to create a feedback loop that pushes the boundaries of surfing through design. He's able to build a board born out of design theory, surf it, notice areas that can be improved, iterate the design, and design a rendition of the same board that builds on the feedback of the first. This cycle is repeated until a design has been perfect and thus a model is born.
Take a spin through Troy's models and you'll see that he's designed different styles of boards that correlate with different ways of approaching specific waves. Looking for a small wave cruiser? There's longboards to suit folks that are learning all the way up to some of the most talented longboarders around today. Looking for a board to ride when the surf is pumping? Troy's diverse lower volume designs can work for punchy Newport Beach wedges or for softer surf. If the waves are somewhere in between small and pumping, there's a whole gamut of boards that lie between the low and high volume spectrum that cover a broad range of skill levels. It's as if Troy has worked out a model for each and every day a surfer can experience that allows one to find the most fun with the hand that nature has dealt them on that day. It really drives home the quote from one history's most legendary surfers, Mickey Munoz, “There are no bad waves, only a poor choice of equipment and a lousy attitude.”
- Kyle Kennelly
[Daydream Surf Shop]
