"Off Shore Pipeline Masters," Chris Carter, Surfing Magazine, April 1980

Fifty minutes into the final heat of the Off Shore Pipeline Masters, Dane Kealoha is taking off backside, weaving down the face, and uncoiling in the trough with a Dane Bottom Turn that rockets him high in the pocket where he does a Dane Layback, disappears, then pops out to the cheers of the crowd. The applause dies momentarily and then erupts again as Dane walks up the beach toward the officials. He has finished the 70-minute final 20 minutes early, and already the crowd is exalting Kealoha as the winner.

But while the roisterous cheers are wafting away with the tradewinds, Larry Blair is taking off on a set wave. Blair turns halfway down the face, sets his edge, and is gone from sight for 40 yards before being spit out the end of the barrel with his hands raised over his head. Hoots go up again, but this time they’re for Blair. The people in the crowd are looking at one another with wide grins and nodding their heads as if to say, “It's not over yet—this is going to be a close one!"

The excitement that surrounded the Off Shore Pipeline Masters was simmering long before the finalists reached the water—since about two months earlier, when Rabbit Bartholomew slipped into the IPS ratings lead with a win in Florida. The effect the Masters was going to have on the Dane, Cheyne, Wayne, and Mark Richards (the long shot) race for the crown was crucial. Anyone keeping tabs on the point totals knew what it would take to win the IPS crown, and each scorekeeper had his own ideas on the chain of events that would determine the outcome: “It’ll be Dane and Rabbit down to the wire, unless Cheyne beats Dane ’n’ Rabbit bombs out—but Rabbit has the goddam competitive edge over everyone. But then again if MR could take the whole thing.”

It began to sound like bookies laying odds at Churchill Downs.

But as contest time drew nearer, the speculation took a palpable surge toward Dane Kealoha. Some said you could feel it, that the whole North Shore was behind him, bucking for Dane to win. They felt the ball had been tossed into his hands, and now the poker-faced Hawaiian, who had been lauded all year as the world's fastest surfer, only had to take it and run. He was back in the waves that he surfed the best, and no one could dispute the fact that he was looking redhot during the month of November. They were rooting for the hometown boy done good; the odds-on favorite who was the sole hope to beat the Aussies.

By the time the Pipe prelims were over, the pro-Kealoha sentiments were gaining steam—all of the sudden this was no idle conjecture. Dane had powered his way to the finals, surfing well in the five-foot onshore-wind peaks that hampered the performances of most of the established Pipeline fraternity—Lopez, Russell, Dunn, Crawford. But what further bolstered their convictions was the fact that Rabbit and Cheyne had both been knocked out early. This meant that if Dane won the Pipe final, he would take the points lead going into the World Cup, the season-ending contest, the World Cup.

But the surfers Dane would have to beat weren’t going to be pushovers. Shaun Tomson had secured himself a spot in the finals, as had Larry Bertlemann, defending champ Larry Blair, Tommy Carroll, and Mark Richards, who also still had a very slim chance at the IPS crown. This was going to be one hell of a final, with a lot more at stake than the $4,200 first prize.

Over a week lapsed between the prelims and the finals, which gave the living room statisticians time to go home and crunch the IPS numbers. Even though Dane looked unstoppable, the prelims had in fact only compacted the point spread. Rabbit’s and Cheyne’s losses had taken up most of the slack there was between the top four competitors. It was still going to be Dane, Wayne, Cheyne, and MR (maybe) battling for the crown, only the competition was going to be even keener.

The prelims had been held in substandard Pipeline with right-handers coming through pretty consistently, which explains to an extent why the final was packed with regularfooters. Larry Blair and Tommy Carroll were going to have a distinct physical advantage if Pipeline was classic for the final, although the backsiders could be counted on to give them a run for their money. Shaun had won the Masters in 1975, and the rest of the pack could beat you if they were on, but it would most likely be tubes that would determine the winner, and Classic Pipeline still favors the goofyfooters.

When the swell arrived over a week later, it looked like a tossup. The swell was good sized and out of the northwest, and the waves rolled and yawed on the second reef then peeled both ways on the inside. It was good Pipeline, but the rights were going to even the odds, and it was going to be harder for the ABC-TV crew to cover all the action with competitors riding in both directions.

Another wrinkle: The ABC crew was scheduled to leave on Tuesday the 11th, and when the waves weren’t showing by Sunday, the contest organizers were getting a bit edgy. Even though the waves came on Monday, it meant the Masters and the Duke Classic would have to be held on the same day in order to get television coverage. More headaches for Fred Hemmings and the Duke organizers, but in the end, strangely enough, everything worked out fine.

On Monday morning, after three heats of the Duke were run finished and Mark Richards got out of the water at Sunset, the whole gallery moved en masse down the beach to Pipeline, adding to the traffic snarl already in effect on Kam Highway. Looking from the beach at Pipeline toward the path that leads from Ke Nui Road, it looked like termites after a rain.

ABC set up on the beach with wires and cables running here and there, and director Andy Sidaris (he produces college football as well) was running back and forth shouting orders. It was faintly reminiscent of a carnival (Pat O’Neill stole the show at Sunset during the Duke when he hauled a portable jacuzzi onto the beach), or even a rodeo, complete with bucking bronco and six anxious riders. There were 23 photographers vying for pole position along the sand berm on the shoreline, and from there back the whole entourage from the Duke was settling in for the entertainment. You soon got the feeling that the Masters is no ordinary contest on the North Shore. It is a major event that involves the whole community because the common denominator here is the ocean—and surfing.


Carroll, who worked his way through the pack in the prelims as first alternate, making this his first major pro event in Hawaii, lacked competitive experience at Pipeline. Surfing against those who had been through the paces there made it difficult for the 19-year-old to get the better waves. It may have been the six-man heat and the jockeying for position that slowed Tommy down, because he didn’t get the left tubes that would chalk up the points. Near the end of the final, though, he strengthened his showing with two stand-up barrels. Unfortunately, the best one was on his 11th wave and wasn’t counted in the final tabulation. Tommy took sixth, but looks to be a threat at Pipeline in the future.


Larry caught the largest wave of the final, a right tube that closed before he could make an exit. Although he got some small tubes, the Rubberman wasn’t looking strong down the stretch, and his characteristic flexible body-torque wasn’t altogether evident. Bertlemann also broke an unwritten rule by refusing to wear on his trunks the logo of the Off Shore, the event sponsor. In fact, he went to great lengths to dupe Off Shore, and this was regarded by IPS aficionados as unprofessional and downright belligerent. Considering the problems with getting sponsors for surfing events in the past, the IPS will obviously have to draft measures to skirt these problems in the future.


MR makes riding Pipeline seem almost routine. His backside attack was nearly flawless, coming off the bottom and off the lip with incredible precision. Surfing remarkably well, MR rebounded off the ledge with double-jointed moves that reflect the ten years of experience he has had in Hawaii. His style is so refined, yet so indisputably radical and calculated, that he almost makes it look too easy. But he failed to get the big tubes. MR took fourth, which did everything but completely dissolve any hopes he had of capturing the 1979 IPS crown. For MR, it was down to the last contest of the year, the World Cup, and he would have to finish no lower than first to win.


For the first 20 minutes of the final, Shaun was blazing. He opened began with a pair of tubes, backside and frontside, and that started the adrenalin pumping on the beach. Andy Sidaris was forever on the walkie-talkie asking his camera crew, “Did you get that one, did you get that one?" Michael Tomson leaned over to me and said Shaun was going to be the man to beat. But when Dane and Larry came on, Shaun could only salvage a third in the final tally.


Dane surfed with the eternity and abandon that have become his trademark. Combining a powerhouse and recklessly beautiful on-edge style with his uncanny positioning, he put himself into the slot time after time. Dane actually got the longest tube of the day—a right cylinder that wound down the beach away from the crowd and cameras. If he could have squeaked out the end, he could have possibly won the final, but as the wave began breaking into white water near the shore, the lid was sealed. Dane had eight waves before the halfway mark, and by the time he finished his tenth and final wave, 20 minutes before the final horn, you’d have been reluctant to put your money on anyone else.


Blair's contest strategy was to get the biggest waves and the deepest tubes—a simplified approach, but one that paid off. He was so selective in the final that he waited 15 minutes before taking off on his first wave. Eventually, Blair picked up two tube rides that brought the beach to a roar—one of them scored a perfect 20 points. And in the final tally it was the tubes that made the difference. But it was very close. In fact, the judges had to go back to Blair’s sixth wave to break a tie with Dane. By winning, Blair joined Gerry Lopez and Rory Russell as the only competitors to win the Masters for two consecutive years.

Dane, having placed second, moved within nine points of the IPS ratings lead behind Rabbit, with Cheyne and MR not too far behind. When the statisticians went home that night and summed up the new points, the only thing that was certain was that it was down to the World Cup for the grand finale.

1979 Pipeline Masters

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