The Jazz Stylings of Phil Edwards

Nothing better highlights surfing’s uncomfortable relationship to competition than the example set in the late 1950s and early 1960s by California surf heroes Miki Dora and Phil Edwards. Both competed on occasion, but neither ever won—and it didn’t matter a bit. Jack Haley, Mike Haley, and Ron Sizemore rode to victory, in that order, in the West Coast Surfing Championships from 1959 to 1961, but every gremmie from Mission Beach to Narrabeen knew that Dora and Edwards surfed circles around tho...

Phil Edwards would go into a turn looking as if he’d been unexpectedly shoved, then finish off smoother than Gene Kelly.