The Santa Cruz AAAA was held on the weekend of April 6-7, at Santa Cruz Rivermouth. SURFER Magazine went big on the coverage (seven pages; the Duke Invitational, held a few months earlier, got just six) because this was the first contest to feature the Western Surfing Association's newly-created AAAA division. At the time, as writer Drew Kampion noted, it was "as professional a classification as a surfer can find himself in." Over the next seven years, until the designation was retired, most ...