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Dynamic bowlegged regularfooter from Sydney, Australia; New South Wales state champion in 1968 and 1969, when he also won back-to-back Bells Beach events; perhaps best known for commitment, at the height of his surfing career, to the Hare Krishna movement. "Spencer was the original surf guru," 1978 world surfing champion Wayne Bartholomew later recalled. "His body lived in the West but his spirit belonged to the East."

Born in 1949, Spencer was adopted son of a well-to-do Sydney surgeon and his wife. The family moved often when he Ted young, and he received a religious education during his five years at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School. Spencer didn't begin surfing until age 16—much later than most of his soon-to-be big-name surfing peers—when a friend from school who owned a board took Ted to Palm Beach.

Short, well-built, and incredibly athletic, Spencer took to the new sport immediately, and within two years was among the best young surfers in Australia; at 17, while still competing as a junior, he finished 3rd in the Australian National Titles and qualified for Australia's 1966 World Surfing Championships team.

The following year, 1967, marked the beginning of the shortboard revolution in Australia, and '64 world champion Midget Farrelly took special notice of Spencer during this dynamic period of change. "Ted Spencer has gone short," Farrelly wrote in his weekly 

 column in mid-November), "and his style seems to fit right in with his smaller board [which he] dominates with a powerful upright stance and a back-leg turn, sending it spinning in any direction in an instant."

In 1968, the same year he won the first of two back-to-back New South Wales surfing titles, Spencer joined up with Nat Young and Wayne during the filming of Paul Witzig's era-defining surf movie 

While Spencer proved he was a progressive and adaptive surfer—the group traveled to Europe, Costa Rica, and Hawaii—he was to some degree overshadowed by Lynch and Young. (Still a teenager at this point, Spencer later said that he'd been "taken along by the tide," and that his experience with Young, the surfer whom Spencer had patterned his own riding after, was at times fraught. "I was disillusioned by the surf star who was supposed to be God, who was set up as God, the greatest, and who didn’t fulfill that position. It was an animal period; a very selfish period.")

Always a hit-or-miss competitor, Spencer's run in the 1968 World Championships, in Puerto Rico, ended early. The following year, Spencer narrowly defeated Nat Young for the 1969 NSW state title; one week later he again defeated Young to win his second Bells event.

Also in 1969, Spencer won what was billed as a professional surfing event at Noosa, beating Baddy Treloar and Peter Drouyn. The "twist," as Midget Farrelly noted in his contest write-up for the 

, "was that the prizemoney, totaling $1,000, was never presented."

It was around this time, with the Vietnam war at its peak, that Spencer was called up for national service. As Young later recalled in his autobiography:

Ted was the first of our friends to be called up and we talked over all the different ways we thought he might get out of it, but none sounded foolproof or even practical. On the day of his [enlistment] interview, Ted had taken some powerful drugs and when one of the interviewers asked him to hold his arm above his head, he did so—but failed to bring it back down. This is a symptom associated with schizophrenia and Ted was discharged. When Ted told us this story he said he wasn’t consciously trying to give a false impression to the Army officers, he just genuinely didn’t think to bring his arm down, and they didn’t ask him to—he was absolutely sincere.

 showed Spencer at his absolute best. In beautiful jade-green pointbreak tubes at Angourie, riding a tiny snub-nosed George Greenough-inspired board that he made himself, Spencer proves to be the finest tight-in-the-pocket surfer of the era, with an aerodynamic tube stance and perfect placement of head and shoulders. (Sea of Joy was filmed mostly in 1970; by 1971 Spencer had done a complete about-face and was riding longer, narrower boards.)

During this early phase shortboard revolution, Spencer and his stubby Shane Surfboards White Kite model—a top seller in Australia—pushed the limits of small-wave performance surfing with more vigor than anyone, apart from fellow Aussie Wayne Lynch. Dark-haired and handsome, Spencer also became a favorite among Aussie teenybopper surf fans, and at the 1971 National Titles a group of them made a huge "TED SPENCER" banner and gleefully followed him down the beach before each heat.

By 1970, Spencer had become aware of the Hare Krishna movement. "It was a slow transformation for Ted," Nat Young later wrote. "[But when] the conversion was complete, I thought he looked great with his shaved head and saffron robes. I recall chanting with him on occasion and feeling this incredible love." Spencer continued to ride waves, and in a 1974 

 magazine interview he said, "When I surf, I dance for Krishna." That same year, in what would be his last major contest result, Spencer placed 4th at Bells and earned a Best Tube Ride award.

In 1992, Spencer was named one of his country's "50 Most Influential Surfers" by 

 magazine. In 2015, Spencer was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame.

Spencer, Ted

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