1969 Smirnoff Pro-Am

"Champion Wins Title In Surfing," Oakland Tribune, Nov 22

Margo Godfrey, 16, of Santa Barbara, won the $500 first prize to the pro women's division of the Smirnoff Pro-Am surfing contest yesterday at Santa Cruz.

Miss Godfrey, a 95-pound brunette, and the reigning world champion, caught her last wave as the moon rose over Steamer Lane, the beach where the world's largest and richest surfing contest is being held

Fifteen-foot waves and 51-degree water temperatures provided perfect conditions for the 250 contestants from as far away as Hawaii and Australia who began a three-day quest for $4,350 in prizes.

Finishing in order behind Miss Godfrey were fellow Californians Marcia Carr, Santa Cruz; Judy Dibble, San Diego; Joyce Hoffman, Solana Beach; and Sheri Crummer, San Clemente.

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"Do Wa Diddie Squiggly Wigglies: Get Lost!" by Dan Levin, Sports Illustrated, Dec 8, 1969

No California wave could be that big, but still it grew, and as it did a dwarfed surfer floated up its face, five feet, 10 feet, 13 feet to its curling peak, and suddenly he stood erect, sliding into the yawning trough, a surfboard Astaire now, turning, switching feet, lost in what could have been a costly dream. This was a contest, and the judges could no longer see him. Still he rode. Other top surfers were nearby, and all wanted the biggest first prize in surfing history, $1,500, donated by Smirnoff vodka. “I just forgot everything,” Charles (Corky) Carroll said later. “I was really stoked.” For 22-year-old Corky Carroll nothing, not even the $1,500, which he won anyway, was worth more than being stoked.

“Taking off on a wave like that is like starting a downhill in skiing,” he said. “Nothing else can be going through your mind. If you think about prize money or the price of surfboards, you’re through.”

True, but if someone didn’t think about such things, Corky Carroll might be suffering behind a desk somewhere, very unstoked. Surfing is a business as well as an art, and only one branch is conducted on a board; others, like surfing journalism, equipment and fashions, make the idyllic life of a top professional possible.

In 1967 Corky Carroll won Surfer magazine’s Most Popular Surfer poll; last year he won 10 contests, only one for money—$400— but raked in another $28,600 from endorsements, mostly of surfboards and Jantzen swimwear.

The Smirnoff International Pro-Am offered a total purse of'$4,350—like the first prize, an all-time high for a surfing contest. Nowadays most surfers are health food nuts, but few complained about being sponsored by a vodka firm. Robert Scott, 42, the meet director, president of the Western Surfing Association and a doctor of medicine, justified the tie-in quite easily. “I wouldn’t like to see a cigarette company sponsor a meet,” he said, “but alcohol is a form of food, an adjunctive, a vasodilator—I have wine with all my meals.”

A Smirnoff representative explained his company’s role. “Surfing is in the same position as skiing 25 years ago,” he said. “We’re looking for promotions relating to such trends, and as the sport grows so will our participation.” There were some dubious looks. “We’re emphasizing that it’s no longer fashionable to be drunk,” he added.

Still, by the meet’s final day, it seemed as if everybody involved could have used a drink or two. To put it mildly, there were problems. The contest was held at Santa Cruz’ Steamer Lane, where there is a shoreline of 15- to 20-foot cliffs. The night before the competition began, someone pushed the judges’ stands over a cliff into the boiling surf, following them with a VW bus. The next day a spectator tripped and went the same route. In the first hour of professional competition, at least six custom-made boards were destroyed when they were driven by the surf against rocks at the base of the cliffs.

Then things really got bad.

The waves almost disappeared, those competing at the time refused to continue, and Dr. Scott was faced with the first strike in surfing history, led by Corky Carroll. That night, following an earthquake in Alaska, the Coast Guard issued a tidal wave alert for the Santa Cruz area and Dr. Scott had an extra glass of wine. He is an ardent surfer himself, and four months ago he sold a house and gave up a lucrative practice in Gilroy, Calif, to be nearer good surf. But now he yearned for trees and farms. And the worst was yet to come.

The last morning’s competition was moved 25 miles south to Moss Landing, but in less than an hour the wind shifted and the surf became blown out. Everyone tried to leave at once and the Highway Patrol had to be called out to untangle the traffic jam on the road back to Steamer Lane. Before the meet ended, five surfboards were stolen from two Hawaiian surfers.

And thieves weren’t the only dissidents. Several local surfers weren’t giving up their favorite spot just because of a contest. Time and again they created confusion in the judges’ stands, where glare had already hindered surfer identification. Finally, Dr. Scott sent out a squad of bullyboys.

“Freedom fighter!” one yelled to a townie, “Ten guys are waiting for you on the beach.”

“I’d rather be a freedom fighter than a goose-stepping pig,” the townie retorted. “Surfing is a free man’s art,” he said later. “I just want to be able to ride waves.”

The most serious trouble, however, originated on the judges’ platforms; truly objective scoring is nearly impossible in surfing. There are basics, like doing turns and cutbacks and not falling off, but, of course, no two waves are the same. And at Santa Cruz there was this thing about adding scores. Three or four times, mistakes in addition were made, and with $1,500 riding on each result, there was much screaming.

Then, at about 3 p.m. the surf began to build from five to 10, to what some observers estimated as an astonishing 16 feet. More than 5,000 stoked spectators arrayed along the cliff tops watched as the finalists pad- died out. Immediately, one surfer disappeared under a 15-foot wave, and it seemed minutes before he reappeared, bobbing to the surface like a soap chip in a child’s bath. Everyone stuck to smaller waves after that.

An agile young surfer named Dru Harrison won the $800 second-place prize, but tall, slim David Nuuhiwa (pronounced, appropriately, new-wa,ve-uh), who took $500 for third place, was perhaps the meet’s most graceful performer. Unlike Corky Carroll, Nuuhiwa rarely moves on his board. Rather he moves the board itself, up and down, turning in and out of the breaking edge of the wave. Nuuhiwa, 22, is one of the most unusual-looking young men in sport; his father is German-Hawaiian, his mother is Japanese, and he has the imperious look of an Aztec king.

Still, Corky Carroll delivered the weekend’s most memorable performance. His tanned, gremlin face is familiar to surfers everywhere. He is the Puck of surfing, and ashore he dressed accordingly: a red and blue wet suit, a corduroy jacket, and a black-felt Indian hat. During the amateur and junior competitions, he filled in on the announcer’s stand. He was the first to take on the surf crashers. “Out there are a few doo wa diddie squiggly wigglies,” came Carroll's high voice from out of the loudspeaker the crowd. “We’d really dig it if you left. Pleasure Point’s better anyway. Eight feet, perfect shape, naked girls, dealers.” When someone took a bad wipeout in the kelp at low tide he said: “A little soup, a little kelp, leaves you swimming and yelling for help.”

Corky Carroll began this dual role early, riding his first wave in 1956 when he was 8. “I was the cockiest bigmouthed gremmie on the coast,” he says of his days in Surfside Colony, California, where he was brought up. He didn’t win his first contest until 1962, but the next year he took the U.S. Junior Championship, and he has won the Seniors three times now. At the world championships, he finished third in 1966 and eighth in 1968. In all, he has won more than 50 contests. As a youngster, Carroll lived across the street from the beach, on low land, and more than one winter high tide flooded his living room. “Living room surf is lousy,” he says. “When I wiped out I’d have to stand in the back door, wait for my board to come by, then paddle back across the street.”

Living room surf may be a product of Corky Carroll’s imagination, but soon, he fears, there may be no surfing at all. Each year there are fewer California surfing areas open to the public. “You may be seeing the end of an era right now,” he says, “the pre-surfatorium era.”

For Corky Carroll, though, such periods of doomsday thinking are rare. Out on the waves he lives in the present, which is how he likes it. Recently he got tired of knowing what time it was, so he threw his watch away. “I looked at it one day,” he said, “and didn’t know why. Surfing sure is a weird trip.”

[Note: The women's division of the Smirnoff Pro-Am likely was not pro, and received virtually no media coverage.]