Bill Cleary's "The High Performers" was published in the March 1967 issue of SURFER. Nat Young had just won the 1966 World Championships in San Diego, which not only changed the direction of performance surfing, but showed that Australia was by and large the source for everything new and progressive in the sport—with the exception of big-wave riding. "The High Performers" doesn't mention the '66 titles. It was published after the contest but was probably written before. Fifteen photos are spread across the 12-page article, and there's not an Aussie anywhere to be seen. "Performers" boiled down, is a fawning and many-voiced salute to David Nuuhiwa ("the whole sport is following Nuuhiwa now . . . he's so far ahead it's ridiculous!"), and an insult-by-omission dickslap at Nat Young and his countrymen in general ("the Australians might be a bit more conservative in general"). You can see why it might piss off a bright young Aussie partisan, like John Witzig. We'll get to that later today.

This article has been slightly edited and shortened from the original.

Today’s high-performance is a hyphenated “pop-pop-popping kind of surfing,” says Australia’s articulate senior high-performer, Bernard “Midget” Farrelly. California high-performer Robert August agrees. “We’ve taken what was handed down to us . . . we’ve worked with it . . . and now we’ve blown it all to 

“In the old days,” says Farrelly, “we had a lot of fellows who were sliding straight off, waggling arms and legs and doing all kinds of things they thought were functional. But functional surfing was only born when surfers finally decided to do things on the board that had a bearing on how it moved along the wave. Today that’s basic; then it was revolutionary. Functional surfing was the transition between the actual beginnings of the light board era (ala Simmons) and today’s pace of high-performance. And of course high-performance is functional surfing-but before you can perform at a high rate you must become functional. If you’re not (functional) then you’re not performing . . . and you’re kidding nobody but yourself. Everybody else can see what you’re doing . . .”

This was the select cast of pioneer high-performers, the dreamers in an era when there were few to follow. Nobody really did see what they were doing . . . as they led us across the wave and back inside the curl, right down to the center of the stage and . . .

DAVID And His Magic Space-Age High-Performing ROLLER-COASTER!!

The early performers had been locked into that horizontal railroad track beneath the curl-but today is the Space Age! The wilderness has been tamed, the prairie plowed under. All eyes are turned upward-to David, blazing across the wave like some dark projectile bent on another galaxy. “Most of the old performers are stuck at one point,” says David, “and they’ve reached their peak. They can’t go higher.” But David has gone higher. He’s taken that horizontal railroad track and as August reminds us, he “has blown it all to hell!”

“Performance is different now,” August continues. “We used to take off and drive as far back into the curl as we could go . . . and we’d come blasting out again right in the slot.

We’d put ourselves under the curl and stay there. That’s what we called functional surfing. 

This new high-performance is an up-and-down deal

Now you take off in a stall, drive for the bottom and climb way out in front of the wave and get up as much speed as you possibly can and then shoot up to the top again and come bouncing down off the curl. You’re going so fast that you’re approaching that stage where you’re almost out of control. That’s the most exciting part of the ride. So when you come bouncing down off those sections like David does with his roller-coasters you get more speed than you can any other way . . .”

Today, surfers everywhere tend to agree with the new philosophy of vertical high-performance, though the Australians might be a bit more conservative. “The new thing in Australia,” says Farrelly, “is to ride well back in the curl, really tight to the wave, and base your performance about tight little turns well back in the wash of the wave . . . "

California's Johnny Fain reflects the Malibu stage of exaggerated high-performance. The movements are larger. “You go around that slot like you were on a vertical merry-go-round,” he quips and then leans close and whispers in the confidential tones of a Hollywood handicapper.

“You want to get everything you can out of that wave. And to do that you gotta play the angles.”

However unconsciously, Johnny has said it. All high-performers play the angles. The geometry of every wave is different, whether it be Rincon, Malibu or Sunset Beach. The modern surfboard craftsmen have learned that for a surfboard to perform well on a given wave it must have a geometry complimentary to the curl. Nuuhiwa expresses it with deceptive simplicity. “Today every surfboard is made for a special kind of wave. Like I keep three or four boards around, and if the waves are mushy I use my noserider; if the waves are fast I use my speed board. You have to pick a board that fits the wave. High-performance surfboards match the curl—like a custom-made pair of trunks. You know?”

Last year’s Tom Morey [Noseriding] Invitational focused attention on that final twenty-five percent of surfboard defined as the nose. At last manufacturers had been challenged to build a surfboard that would perform in a specific manner on a known wave. “At that contest,” reports August, “it was proven that concave noses produced long noserides, and although it was a specialized contest a better all-around surfboard resulted from it. Since the concave often produces a little too much drag for general use, we’ve found that a flat-bottomed board, producing just a hint of the lift of the concave, is the answer.”

Delicate movements of the ankles and knees, formerly confined to the ski-slopes, now convey a world of meaning to surfing’s high-performers who come bobbing and weaving through sections on the nose like they were skiing powder. And with the new fins, side-slipping has risen an art within itself. By far its most exciting application is in noseriding.Indeed, as David has suggested, “Most of the old performers are stuck at one point.” Only a few of the high-performers (notably Dora) have been seen to dance through section on the nose . . . until David. For most the nose is still a railroad track. But Nuuhiwa has perfected vertical mobility on the nose, too. Again he is deceptively uncomplicated when discussing it: “Most of the guys are trying to ride the nose with their full weight up there. I kind of lightfoot it, keeping most of my weight on my back foot. I can go a lot farther that way.”

Fain condescendingly agrees. “Nuuhiwa’s greatest achievement is the exploitation of side-slipping on the nose. While everybody else just hops up there and hopes the wave will hold them, there isn’t any guesswork with Nuuhiwa. If the wave mushes out he starts that rocking motion of his and breaks the fin free and side-slips to the bottom . . . instead of having to retreat to the tailblock for control.”

Farrelly expresses it more technically. “David is the living example of weighting and un-weighting and of lowering his center of gravity at precisely the right instant and of shifting his weight from his front foot to his back-all the while appearing deceptively stationary on the nose. He’s ahead of everybody up there . . . but not everybody sees it.”

“The whole sport is following Nuuhiwa now,” claims August. “He’s more creative than anyone. Whatever they’re thinking up now, Nuuhiwa’s already done it. He’s so far ahead it’s ridiculous!”

Yes, today most of the pioneer performers will readily admit that the young surfers are sliding towards a new frontier and that they have forged well ahead of everyone else in the techniques of functional surfing. Ironically, the older performers are following them. “The young kids have this relaxed kind of creativity,” says Farrelly. “Like David. Look what he’s done for the sport and he’s barely eighteen!”

These are the new gods. The old ones were built by word of mouth; their exploits grew into heroic myths; and their names gave testimony to that colorful era when every surfer on the coast knew every other surfer on the coast by his first name. But the seasons pass and the list of high-performers under the age of eighteen grows steadily longer, their standing in the eyes of the world compiled quite accurately by tabulating machines following each officially sanctioned competition. They were born to it; the old gods were not.

“I’m trying to find all sorts of new things to do on the wave,” says David. “Spinning-out on purpose when I was inside the tube was one thing, and I can do that almost any time I want now, when I’m going my way (left). Another thing was my roller-coaster. When a section came down, guys just tried to duck under it, so I did just the opposite. I’d go up the wave as hard as I could and then fall down with it as it broke. Yeah . . . I guess I’m always looking for new things to do. All sorts of impossible things that just might come true.”

Tell us, David. How does it feel to be told that the entire sport of surfing is following you?

"THE HIGH PERFORMERS," BY BILL CLEARY (1967)

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