Dynamic Australian goofyfoot surfer from Lorne, Victoria; teenage messiah of the shortboard revolution in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and generally regarded as the inventor of “vertical” surfing. “He was the Future of Surfing incarnate,” Hawaiian pro surfer Reno Abellira said of Lynch. “A boy wonder with searing eyes, a disarming choirboy smile, and an attacking style that often left him upside-down in the curl, only to recover in midair and land back on his wax.”…

While surf magazines published some impressive black-and-white photographs of Lynch in 1968, his star-making moment came in 1969 with the release of Evolution, Paul Witzig’s rough-hewn cult classic surf movie. Two years earlier, surfers on 10-foot-long boards were focused mainly on walking the board and hanging ten. Lynch, the 16-year-old master of the just-introduced shortboard, featured in the opening sequence of Evolution riding a 7′ 1″ stubby, changed the direction of performance surfing almost singlehandedly, riding out of a low crouch, his thin legs collapsing and extending pneumatically from one tightly arced turn to the next. Although 1966 world champion Nat Young and 1968 Bells winner Ted Spencer costarred in Evolution, the film is mostly remembered as a Lynch showcase…

Video: Wayne Lynch