Eccentric and innovative kneeboarder-designer-filmmaker from Montecito, California; known as the “barefoot genius,” and regarded by many as the most influential surfer of his generation. Greenough was the mid-1960s originator of full-speed, banked-turn, high-performance surfing, a leading figure in the shortboard revolution, and the producer of 1969’s The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun, with its groundbreaking in-the-tube photography.

Greenough was born (1941) into a wealthy Santa Barbara railroad family, a direct descendant to famed 19th-century American sculptor Horatio Greenough, and he grew up in a sprawling Spanish hacienda in nearby Montecito.

In 1964, Greenough made the first of many visits to Australia, where he was befriended by a group of top surfers including Bob McTavish and Nat Young. A year later, Greenough developed his sub-five-foot flexible “spoon” kneeboard (consisting of an all-fiberglass kneeling area edged in foam on the nose and rails), on which he was able to perform water-gouging turns and cutbacks; direction changes made by stand-up surfers, on their bulky 10-foot boards, were slow and clunky by comparison. Greenough’s riding was a revelation to McTavish. “Look at that thrust!” he later wrote, recalling the first time he watched the round-shouldered, straw-haired Californian surf. “Carve off the top, drive back down the face, repeat. That’s it!”
Young won the 1966 World Surfing Championships using a Greenough-made fin, and in early 1967 McTavish developed the vee-bottom surfboard—the opening move in what would soon be called the shortboard revolution—in order to try and make a stand-up board that performed like Greenough’s kneeboard. “George’s fantastic little invention,” McTavish said in 1966, talking about the spoon design, “is a revolution.”

“George Greenough does on a belly board what everyone else is trying to do. He does things with the waves and his board that I have never seen done before. I think he is the most exciting surfer I have ever watched and is just as interesting to talk with. Greenough is out here once again to ride some waves and shoot some footage for a movie he is making. The movie unlike most surfing films will be shot around the tube and most of the photography will be done by Greenough from his small board while riding inside the curl. He has already started his shooting and if the remainder of his film will be anything like the start it will be a remarkable film. His footage so far was shot inside the curl at Lennox Head. The stills from the film look fantastic, one in particular which shows a view from 15 feet inside a clean top to bottom curl and through the opening you can see blue sky and a few white clouds.

Greenough’s equipment is just as unusual as the photographs he takes. Possessing a practical ingenuity George turns old pieces of machinery and plumbing into highly functional gear. His fluid head tripods, and super strong, super light, water-proof camera cases have to be seen to be believed. Greenough is not the type of fellow that you can say belongs to one group or another. He is an individualist in every imaginable way.

However one word we can think of does come close to describing every aspect of the man – and his attitude toward living.

The word is radical

In the face of conformity – and truly doing his own thing – stands George Greenough.”

1969 Surfing World Volume 12, No.5