"Hakman Wins Again," Honolulu-Advertiser, December 23, 1972

Honolulu's Jeff Hakman, who grew up riding the waves at Sunset Beach, rode them to victory and first-place money of $4,000 in the Hang Ten Professional Surfing Championships yesterday at the North Shore.

With his mother and about 500 spectators looking on, the 24-year-old high-wave artist swept to a victory with 1,243 points in eight-foot surf. It brought his winnings in the last month to $7,500, including $2,250 for second place in last month's Smirnoff Championships at Haleiwa.

Hakman affirmed his place as one of world's greatest surfers by outscoring his nearest rival, Barry Kanaiapuni of Hawaii, by 76 points under a new point scoring system. For the first time in a major surfing contest, all contestants were judged for three rounds in wave heats rather than time heats The new system rewards surfers for consistency since no one is eliminated by the clock or bad luck as under the usual judging standards.

"The Hang Ten American Pro Contest," by Drew Kampion, SURFER Magazine, May 1973

And here we are at The Outrigger Canoe Club in Honolulu for a briefing by (shhh!) George Downing, long-time surfer, waterman, competition celebrity and now Head Judge and Official Authority for the Hang Ten American Pro. George is going through the Hang Ten American Pro Championship Rules book. The cover of the rule book reads: "The rules of the Hang Ten American Pro Championships reflect an attempt to formulate a totally objective professional surfing scoring system in that a contestant will not be judged on style or exhibition of grace." These words being printed below the Hang Ten logo showing a surfer with style exhibiting grace.

Downing proceeds to read the rules, page by page, item by item, first with officials and scorers for the contest, then with the competitors themselves. “This contest is different from those of the past,” he says.

Scoring would consist of an accumulation of points by each contestant for specific maneuvers assigned specific point values for specific wave sizes. Three rounds of surfing, four heats per round (each surfer surfs three times), add up the points, high man wins. During the first heat of each round the Wave Count for the entire round is established; the Wave Count being the total number of medium- or large-sized waves allowed ridden in the heat. When the number, is reached, the heat ends. Small waves do not diminish the count, but points achieved on small waves are added to a surfer’s score. Downing talked at some length, attempting to delineate the difference between the classic call of interference and the new Hang Ten system of Wave Priority. The difference seemed largely semantic, and opened a loophole which Fred Hemmings filled by saying: “Wouldn’t it be worth it to take out someone who’s trying to get a good wave and beat you? Rules are rules. It’s a downfield block!”

There was some consternation among several of the smaller, less aggressive surfers in the room. They sensed, perhaps felt intimidated by, the threat of an aggressive style of competition in this American Pro.

Meanwhile, surfers were encouraged to have teams, or “pit crews,” to maintain extra boards in the channel or on the beach. This is an interesting idea. It allows surfers to cut loose without worrying about losing their boards, as well as to utilize different boards to attempt different things. Show me a man with a hot pit crew, and I’ll show you a man of stature. The pit crew concept lends an air of authenticity to the proceedings, enlarges the importance of the man in the water, and increases the commitment of each surfer who takes advantage of this concept. By creating more subservient positions, it also elevates the competitor himself, much in the way that the 

The official maneuvers themselves consisted of many basic surfing maneuvers (drop-in fade, take-off normal, late takeoff, bottom turn, tube normal, etc.), some radical maneuvers (radical five, radical bottom turn, and tube radical), and some trick maneuvers (helicopter 360, skeg reverse, and the big daddy of 'em all: The Continental Loop, in honor of the $1,000 prize offered by Continental Airlines for that first big completion on a medium-sized-or-above wave.

You can visualize, can’t you, surfers all over the world excitedly emerging from the water after a first completion, saying: “Hey, man, yew see my Continental Loooooop?!”

Thus, with the rules of this Do-Things-For-Money event out of the way, the way was paved for the Competition Itself.

After a frustrating two-week delay, during which Hang Ten contest organizer Dick Graham and George Downing holed up at Del Webb’s Kuilima Hotel, the surf popped up enough to run the American Pro. Strange but true, the trades had not blown for nearly a month—but now they did so at ten- to 20-knots, under partly cloudy skies, triangular plastic flags snapping smartly around the official area, while up on a Val’s U-Drive van sat row upon row of scorers and spotters and recorders, everybody wearing those brightly-colored artfully rendered Hang Ten American Pro T-shirts and holding pads of score sheets each wave ridden got its own score sheet: a list of the available maneuvers with boxes to be checked designating the performance of that maneuver in small (up to 7'), medium (8'-12'), large (13'-18'), and X-large (19'+ ). Waves rated like t-shirts, in a variety of sizes.

In the first heat of Round One, Felipe Pomar made a good appearance (Felipe now lives up on Kauai), demonstrating evenness, consistency and wave knowledge at Sunset in the available ten- to twelve-foot peak surf. Gerry Lopez tried several radical maneuvers on his backhand but encountered stiff-lipped opposition from an unamused inside section. Terry Fitzgerald outrode and outpointed all, however, in spite of a tendency to over-zig-zag (5 points on a small wave, 10 points on a medium wave).

In heat two, Gavin Rudolf rode well, as did goofy-foot Oscar “Chino” Malpartida of Peru, but it was not until heat three that the name of the game became apparent, as Jeff Hakman sat somewhat inside and picked off small wave after small wave, accumulating points like nobody else in frenetic bursts of determined activity. He grabbed 700 points to win his heat, as opposed to around 350 for Fitzgerald to win in heat one. Mike Purpus also rode well in the third heat, as did Peter Townend.

In heat four, Smirnoff Pro winner Paul Neilsen couldn’t put it together to touch the likes of Barry Kanaiaupuni, who was strong, aggressive and radical, and made few mistakes.

So it went for all of Round One and the first three heats of Round Two. Then the sun boiled down into the horizon and the day was shot and the balance tabled for the next morning

The next day, the do-or-die final day, the surf had dropped to six, maybe eight feet, then dropped even more as the world turned.

Because of Hakman’s outlandish lead, day two was a fight for second place (and the rest of the action) with not much hope of anyone overtaking the leader. Even Hakman eased off and never came close to that 700-point round again.

The small waves were comfortable for the surfers, especially guys like Mark Warren, Keone Downing, and of Jeff Crawford, who made up some points. (Crawford had a rough time this winter, getting beat up in his own home, bursting an eardrum at Sunset, then getting hit in the mouth with a can of dog food, thrown like a fist by a large local at Kammie’s.)

By the last heat of the Third Round, a considerable tension had grown up around point results and final placings, as the surfers wondered how many dollars they would be ending up with. As it turned out, to nobody's surprise, Hakman got the most dollars. Four thousand of ’em. BK really go it on in this contest and was a spectacularly consistent, finishing second—good for $1,000. Barry made some fantastic late takeoffs and came from further behind than anyone else. He also got tubed deeper and longer and got the high-point wave of the contest. The tube won Barry $100 from KKUA Radio, and the high-score wave got him a Kawasaki motorcycle.

Steady, steady, steady Peter Townend—a very neat, intelligent, congenial surfer from Australia—got his third third-place finish of the contest season (Smirnoff and Duke). Townend is exceptionally good at Sunset Beach.

Fellow Aussie Paul Neilsen took fourth, though he never really surfed well. Neilsen is unbelievable, however, and would have placed higher had he had surfed as he normally does.

Keone Downing was fifth, working dexterously, and mounting those points while maintaining fine poise and accuracy.

Terry Fitzgerald wiggled into sixth (“Keone beat me by one zig-zag”), but seriously, folks, made some beautiful water-ski turns on dem flat faces.

Mike Purpus has been impressive in the Islands this year. He has a lot of energy and focuses most of it on surfing. He’s been doing it for years, and he’s good. Really good. He hotdogged Sunset as good or better than anyone in the contest and came in seventh.

Elsewhere, Reno Abellira picked up $100 from SURFER for the longest (5 seconds) nose ride of the day.

The general response of those surfers involved in the American Pro was favorable. Most surfers liked the idea of knowing what they had to do and knowing also that they would be scored for each and every maneuver they performed within the accepted list of maneuvers.

There was some controversy over the fact that the waves changed during the course of Round One from peaky-type conditions to more a line-up condition, which offered more wave face and thus more point potential for surfers in heats three and four. Then, of course, the drop in swell overnight made some differences in the equality of the early Round Two (held the first day), and the final Round Two yeat (held the next day). Wha?

That the contest was essentially a wave-catching event, stressing basic maneuvers and consistency, might be one of its strong points, as the results pretty accurately reflect the competence of the competitors at Sunset Beach on those two days.

On the other hand, there was a tendency to over-maneuver and wiggle far afield of those normally conducive aesthetics that make surfing such a high alpha art. But, you know, in making things objective, something has to be lost so that something else ($$$) can be gained.

Once again, Jeff Hakman’s mastery of Sunset Beach has come through with more capital for more materials for the house he’s building up on Pupukea Highlands.

Be it the standard competitive format, with heats working down through eliminations, semifinals, and a final, or be-it this new, cumulative, everybody-surfs-three-times type of event, Hakman is more consistently there, in contention, at or near the front, than anyone else. He puts aside emotion for comprehension, and deals very strictly with the realities of a situation.

Jeff surfed the way he wanted to surf, and he established the pace of the event by running off to an early lead. No one went for the Continental Loop, perhaps because they had an eye on Hakman’s big lead and tried to catch him instead of experimenting along the way.

If professionalism is going to make it in surfing, as it more and more appears is the case, then it will be surfers like Jeff Hakman who will dominate the sport.

Though, in a way, it does seem that there is less and less energy for contests, either for or against. It is debatable whether there is really a market for surfing contests at all. Perhaps the market is simply for surfing.

Anyway, this one is over, and here we are at the new Kuilima Hotel at Kahuku, which went up a year or so ago amid threats and protests by surfers lamenting the demise and townification of Country. But now those same surfers are meeting here and celebrating their hard-won victories, trying hard to please ’cause it’s thousands of dollars at stake, jake, and there are millions of other available rationalizations, where the awards are being given out at a strangely reserved ceremony, without bad vibes, yet without real good ones either, passing out the checks and the trophies, and nobody hung ten.

1972 Hang Ten American Pro

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