Picklum unplugged: How a world title was won by breaking free

But at the end of last year’s tour, and still short of her 22nd birthday, Australia’s newest world champion took the reins.

“Not that Glenn took the reins away from me,” she stresses.

Molly Picklum and her former coach, ex-pro surfer Glenn Hall.Credit: Brent Bielmann/World Surf League

“But I’ve always been keen to see what’s out there, try different things, and be stimulated in different ways. I was never actually stepping out completely on my own, my management always had my back, and I had people always travelling with me, but yeah, I was calling the shots.”

From Hawaii to South Africa, Rio to Bells Beach, Tahiti to Fiji, Picklum called upon a different local expert at each tour stop.

But otherwise, she was in charge. Drawing on all that training, even in just her fourth year traipsing about the globe.

Drawing on the jiu-jitsu mats. “Don’t back her into a corner, the Central Coast pit bull comes out,” Hall laughs.

“I’m the pit bull?!” Picklum fires back. “Where does he think I learned how to put someone in a headlock?!”

The golf course. The “distraction I needed” three years ago when she lost her surfing mojo and could barely stay upright in South African two-footers.

The underwater breath-training and wrestling with the Central Coast-based Team Challenge Australia - “because that’s what happens underwater. You get slammed, your body gets twisted into awkward positions, and you try to stay calm the whole time” - for when the walls of water close in and drag her across tropical reefs on either side of the Pacific.

“That’s just the way Molly has always been, she’s always been so willing to try anything and everything,” mum Danielle Smith says as she waits for her world title-winning daughter to touch down at Sydney airport.

The Molly Picklum welcoming committee.Credit: Edwina Pickles

“We honestly have to schedule rest days for her, and even then, she fills them up with anything she can. She’s just go, go, go. But the difference this year has been her focus, in and out of the water.”

When Picklum does arrive, she’s mobbed by family and friends with signs, custom shirts, hugs, squeals and ‘yeeeeeeeeews’ for days.

Cricketing icon Adam Gilchrist had made a bashful walk down the same airport stairs minutes earlier, completely coincidentally, with nowhere to go but straight into the crowd with eyes only for Picklum.

The 22-year-old is straining under the weight of the WSL’s 35-kilo Duke Kahanamoku Trophy, with “new muscles I didn’t know I had” from constantly lifting it above her head.

Her new keepsake has already caused all sorts of grief at Fiji’s Nadi airport. Picklum started her day trying and failing to convince airline staff that it really needed to be on her flight home. A shoutout to Uri Kurop, the WSL’s man on the ground in Fiji.

Molly Picklum: world champion.Credit: James Brickwood

“He just ran in with his pyjamas, grabbed the whole thing, walked on the tarmac and put it on the plane,” Picklum says.

Like any champion, Picklum makes clear that she has a laundry list of people who have played their part in her triumph.

Not least the small army of surf gurus all over the world who taught her all they knew about the waves she was about to take to pieces.

But that decision to strike out on her own late last year - after consecutive seasons bowing straight out of the WSL’s final five - looms large.

Eight-time world champion Steph Gilmore is an unabashed fan, telling Surfer Magazine leading into Picklum’s breakthrough world title win: “I love that she was willing to take a risk and mix it up.

“Coaches are great, but I think a lot of the surfers rely too heavily on their coaches and support teams to kind of baby them … You have to understand the game yourself because you’re the only one who is making decisions in the heat of the moment.”

Hall, who sees Picklum as more family than protégé, couldn’t be prouder.

Picklum begins her celebrations in the middle of Cloudbreak.Credit: World Surf League

“I effectively coached myself out of a job,” he says.

“There’s nothing more satisfying than a student or athlete taking the tools you’ve worked on with them and developing it to the point they say ‘I’ve got this’.

“I’ve never had someone do that at her age, though. She’s still just 22, and to turn that decision into a world title and her most consistent year on tour, that’s really special.”

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So too, the feedback from Crowe. He’s seen shades of Ash Barty and Gilmore in Picklum - their ability to balance “that killer competitive instinct with being a great human being.”

“It’s completely counterintuitive to these incredibly competitive people, or at least it should be,” Crowe says.

“When you’re that competitive, it’s easy to be defined by what you do. Surfing is what Molly does. But it’s not who she is.

“So win or lose, it doesn’t determine who she is. When you truly believe that, you can separate results from who you are, and it frees you up.”

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