You need to open your mind, my friend.
Consider Slater's dominance at pipe.
Maybe 10% of his waves there are frontside, none that I have ever seen were switch.
But he consistently wins year after year. And he's old enough to be your dad.
I feel a little lame bringing it back to talking about surf idols, that's kinda weak anyway, but that is the kind of thread this is, weak sauce, discussing the style merits of technique.
Bringing it down to the level of figure skating on the ocean.
But anyway, another Slater anecdote for you to learn from.
I saw Slater score a 10 on a tube ride, backside, in crummy 3 footish CA waves a year or two ago, where he actually laid down on the board to make it through a little collapsing section, and stood up again to come out of the tube.
Now that didn't even look cool in the usual way and it wasn't a great wave to say the least.
But no way you could argue he did anything wrong on it.
I mean you could, you'd be pissing into the wind though.
I doubt any other human would have made more of the opportunity that wave presented.
Silly as contest surfing is, watching that heat was a lesson.
By the way, his opponent in the heat if I recall did not score a wave at all.
Maybe he was waiting for a right.
Maybe he should have ridden switch.
No, it wouldn't have mattered.
Another thing to learn from, I heard a quote, of whom I don't know, repeated by a musician:
"Once the music enters your head, it is already compromised"
So don't even sweat the details of stance or technique, unhooking or foils, fish or shortboards.
It will only hold you back.
Like that gopro on your back, it's just a distraction.
BTW get off my wave maggot!