“Sixth Annual SURFER Poll: Nat & Margo!” SURFER, July 1969

Nat Young and Margo Godfrey each took home a trophy from the Sixth Annual SURFER Poll this year. The two surfers who perhaps most epitomized the surfing of 1968 (Nat: a free, liberated aggression; Margo: a woman with a man’s approach to waves) were the overwhelming choices of the readers as the best surfers in the world.


Nat came to the Poll from Australia, his hair gone long and straight (it was curly last time we saw him), wearing a loose-fitting suit with an Edelweiss plastic flower on his coat lapel. Skip came tan and goateed, looking clean and alive in a pure white shirt. Bob Cooper and his wife Wills showed early, he in tux jacket, silk scarf, print-high-necked shirt, striped bell-bottoms, striped orange-and-black socks, and pointed Australian shoes; she with body paint showing through the holes in the sides of her white dress. Corky looked well after a few weeks of heavy surfing and skiing, wearing a loose blue shirt his wife Cheryl had made. Doyle was there in buckskin; Fain in leather; Bigler, back from the Islands, in flowers, mustache taking hold.

Joyce Hoffman came casual in slacks and a shirt; David was more formal, but loose; Bob Scott wore his white tux jacket, and Greg MacGillivray wore those ridiculous black and white shoes he wears on his movie tours. Mark Martinson wore a powder blue jacket, and his date (what was her name?) wore a navel-length dress. Dewey wore a dashing Edwardian jacket; John Severson wore a Victorian double-breasted, and Tom Morey wore a look of deep concern.

Got the picture? Ok, now set it all in the banquet room of the San Clemente Inn, add 150 more people you’ve all heard of, and you have a Sixth Annual SURFER Poll. Or do you?

Something else is there: a feeling, a charisma, that brings all these surfers and members of the industry to the Poll each year. Perhaps it’s a vital concern to keep abreast of the rest of surfing. Perhaps, as Hevs says, it’s food and drink and revelry and money. Perhaps it’s a respect for each other that manifests itself in a desire to share together a good evening devoted to surfers and surfing.

Whatever the reason, things got rolling when Hevs cleared his throat and rumbled into the mike that “1968 was a year of change. Last year was a year of dynamic evolution. Now we are trying to catch up with our equipment and the advances made last year. Tonight I will introduce to you some of the men and women charged with the responsibility of catching up.”


The awards opened with the women, and Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman presented footage of the top five female surfers of 1968. Joey Hamasaki received fifth place, down from second last year. Linda Benson took fourth, commenting as she accepted, “Tonight I feel a lot of love, and I’d like to say I love each and everyone here; I really do.” Sharron Weber was third. Joyce Hoffman (as Hevs said, “a girl who isn’t used to being second”) accepted her award for second saying that she didn’t feel her marriage would be any limitation on her surfing because surfing had always been one of the most important things in her life. After all, second place does not a loser make.

And then Margo accepted her first-place trophy: “When I first started entering competition, I really didn’t know what was going on. I just went out and played in the ocean and really didn’t understand what a wave was doing or what I was doing on it. It was just completely what I felt. This year I’ve learned a lot from the male surfers about boards and waves. Before, I thought ‘As soon as I’m number one, I’ll quit." Now I’m stoked, and see that there’s so much more to surfing. I don’t think I’ll give up now.”


This year’s SURFER Cup for outstanding contribution to the sport went to Cecil Lear, competition director of the Eastern Surfing Association. Accepting for Cecil, Hoppy Swarts of the Western Surfing Association, said, “In just one year, Cecil managed, by driving up and down the East Coast, to pull together a competition program that no one believed possible. Cecil had a lot of help and would be the first to admit it, but still, what he has achieved on the East Coast is something anyone would be proud of.”


A new category was added into the Poll Awards ceremonies this year: the “Mr. Bitchen” Awards for the less publicized and proclaimed achievements in the world of surfing. Awards were given for such accomplishments as: Best Spontaneous Speech of 1968 (Skip Frye: “I was a devil with droopy horns last year; this year I’m not talking.”); Comeback Kid of 1968 (Johnny Fain: “I thank everybody very much”); The Good Karma Award (Steve Bigler: “All the travels, and here we are . . . Karma is a result. . . just a result”); The Black Gold Award (accepted by Bobby Anderson, the local Union 76 station attendant, for Union Oil Corp.: “It was all my boss’s fault”); The Lamp of Knowledge (to Terry Hendricks, “who, like Diogenes with his lantern, illuminated the darkened recesses of our sport.”); The Golden Doily (to Tom Morey and Karl Pope for the most ingenious manufacturing and packaging techniques: the Slipcheck pattern kit); and for best-dressed man and woman, the Mr. & Miss Bitchen Awards went to Bob Cooper and Cheryl Carroll.


After introducing the 11th- to 20th-place men, Hevs directed the evening to the top ten announcements, and MacGillivray and Freeman projected some great footage of the top-voted ten male surfers in the world. The most outstanding footage was of Wayne Lynch, Corky Carroll and Nat Young, plus a fantastic shot of David Nuuhiwa in the tube at Pipeline that Greg took while floating just a few feet away.

A lot happened to the top ten this year. Jock Sutherland slipped from third to tenth, Cabell moved up again to ninth from thirteenth. David Nuuhiwa accepted his eighth-place award and had a few words about his new shop in Huntington Beach. David was eighth last year. A new man in the Top 10 this year was Wayne Lynch. Skip Frye dropped from second to sixth but was stoked anyway. When Hevs asked him what happened in the interim between last year and this year, Skip said, “I don’t know. Hansen went and told Doyle, and Doyle went out and did it.”

Bob Cooper accepted Midget’s award for fifth place, and Rick Grigg accepted fourth place for Fred Hemmings, saying, “I think we should all extend our hearts to the ocean.”

Then Hevs brought up the last three finalists, savoring the suspense he was building: Corky Carroll, Mike Doyle, and Nat Young. “These three men,” said Hevs, “as far as I’m concerned, are the finest in the sport.”

First Hevs introduced the third-place man, the only man who’s won the Poll twice, but who “slipped and slided around for a few years in skid row and a few other places. Don Hansen picked him out of the gutter and put him onto the road to success: Mike Doyle!”

Accepting his award, Doyle said: “I never really made skid row.”

Next, number two: Corky Carroll. “I think the level of surfing over the past year improved about 200%,” said Corky who was last year’s Poll winner. Later Corky added that he had expected Nat to win and that he was really happy to get second. “I thought it would be close between me, Doyle, and Hemmings; I’m really glad to get second,” he said.

Then Nat was left alone with Hevs, and MacGillivray-Freeman Films once again ground out a pretty little blue and green and gold production. Receiving his award, Brennan asked Nat to try to explain the essence of Australia. Nat’s response is printed below. His words brought the place down. Two surfers who had planned to throw a noted manufacturer in the Inn’s pool changed their minds: “It just wouldn’t have been right after what Nat said.”


The official proceedings over, the crowd returned to reveling. “I almost made number twenty,” Mark Martinson said to his date in the navel-length dress. Steve Bigler, who finished fifth last year, and failed to make the top twenty this year, decided to leave for Santa Cruz to practice for the 4A the following weekend. Nat was caught up in a technical discussion with Lamp of Knowledge winner Dr. Terry Hendricks. Bob Cooper was talking business with Rick Stoner. Linda Benson was looking good as she filled some ears about what a great evening it was. Margo smiled and listened in on a conversation. Rich Harbour tried to console Martinson, while Greg MacGillivray tried to console Rich. All was well in Mudville. Mighty Casey had homered.

Nat’s acceptance remarks concerning the essence of Australia and its surfers:

Australia seems to me to be where there is a lot of inspiration in surfing right now. It’s come to be so because of what we have and what we are as people. I hold here Wayne’s award and Midget’s. I play with them. I surf with them. I live with these people. I don’t know what to say now except that I feel very humble here in front of you all, because I come from a country a long way away. I usually feel nothing but pride for myself; however, now I feel very, very humble. I feel proud for Midget; I feel proud for Wayne, and I know that I know what we are as people. Yet there come times when I don’t have to see people, and I surf on my own, and the surfing that you saw in the film was an example of this. I don’t know whether it’s good; I don’t know whether it’s bad. I don’t know whether this is a world surfing poll, or what it is. All I know is that I surf, and I am me and I am a part of something bigger. I’m a part of something you all know as Australia. And these other two men’s awards that I have here . . . but they’re not men . . . they’re just kids . . . we’re all kids . . . we play in the ocean . . . and I dig it, and I’m stoked.

1968 SURFER Poll Awards

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