There is something exceptional in the water around Australia at the moment. An upwelling of young women surfers are bubbling to the surface of the World Surf League and, increasingly, snapping at the leg ropes of the old guard.
If you’ve not heard the name Molly Picklum, best familiarise yourself now. She is ranked No 1 in the world, a 20-year-old prodigy from the Central Coast who is mentored by stars including former tennis world No 1 Ash Barty and three-time surfing world champion Mick Fanning.
Picklum thundered to the top of the charts when she won the Sunset Beach Pro in towering, eight-foot Hawaiian waves in February. Consistent results put her in the yellow jersey heading into the Australian leg of the WSL Championship Tour at Bells Beach this week.
“Having the No 1 next to your name brings a lot more noise,” Picklum says on Monday, before the event window opening on Tuesday. “But I’m embracing it for sure. It’s an opportunity that I’m really grateful for. What an honour to be here in Bells Beach and potentially ring this thing [the famous bell trophy].”
Picklum’s ranking, for now, puts her above legions of Australian experience in two-time world champion Tyler Wright, who won the event last year, Olympian Sally Fitzgibbons, and eight-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore. It is only her second year on tour.
Macy Callaghan, 22, and Isabella Nichols, 25, add to a formidable field of six Australian women in the world’s top 18 this year. The wild card 23-year-old Kobie Enright will join the lineup at Bells, after winning the WSL trials event over the weekend.
“It’s crazy to see where the young women are going in surfing and especially in the last few years,” says Picklum’s coach, former professional surfer Glenn Hall. “I think Molly is just one of many young girls who are pushing the sport.
“She’s an elite competitor. She hasn’t had the limelight that some of the older girls have, but she’s 100% got the skills to do some damage over the years.”
Vying for the spotlight with no less fire in her belly is 24-year-old tour rookie from the Sunshine Coast, Sophie McCulloch. She is pegged as a dark horse with oceans of potential, who has not yet had a chance to gallop due to a devastatingly timed injury.
She had just flashed her mettle when she entered the final event of the second-tier Challenger Series in December needing nothing less than a win at Haleiwa Beach in Hawaii to qualify. She understood the brief and executed, beating an impressive field including five-time world champion Carissa Moore. But weeks later she tore the ligaments in her ankle and was forced to bow out of the first two Championship Tour events in Hawaii.
“We talk about highs and lows in sport,” McCulloch says. “I qualified for the tour then ended up getting surgery on my ankle three weeks later. It was an emotional time for me. But I’m stronger for it.”
McCulloch had qualified relatively late after years battling for position on the notoriously gruelling Qualifying and Challenger Series. Older doesn’t always mean wiser but she capitalised on extra time at home by earning a double degree in marketing and biomedical science from the University of the Sunshine Coast.
She will return to surf Bells with rubber bands and pins in her ankle but with the same ice in her veins.
“I’m planning to take the same approach as Haleiwa and aim to put in my best performance, not worry about the result,” she says. “But in the end, we’re all competitive. We’re not happy unless we win.”
In 2018 the WSL committed to equal prize money for women and men, as well as the subsequent equal competition venues from 2021. It was a move that has helped propel the surge of young female talent in Australian surfing, according to the former Australian professional surfer and WSL chief of sport Jessi Miley-Dyer.
“The changes to the Tour – equal prize money, equal events, equal conditions – have helped to break down barriers and create a platform for the best surfers in the world,” Miley-Dyer says. “It has opened up the door for women to see themselves having sustainable careers as professional surfers. I feel these girls are continuing to push the limits with airs and in waves of consequence.”
It might not be a wave of consequence but Picklum’s barrel-riding and above-the-lip antics at a Rip Curl surf session in Melbourne’s Urbnsurf wave pool two years ago – and her demeanour out of the water – laid down a clear marker.
Picklum, then 18, ordered banana smoothies when free alcohol was on offer at the open bar. The maturity in her surfing and mindset was obvious. She had already won back-to-back Australasian Championship titles in the under-16s and under-18s categories, claimed the Australian Pro Junior in 2019, and was named female rising star at the Australian Surfing awards of 2020.
“That Molly Picklum is going to be a world champion,” the surf photographer Clare Plueckhahn said at the time. It’s a claim heard many times since.
