Road to Santosha

The Kevin and Craig Show

Hippie Trail Gold

At Play in the Fields of Allah

Career Move

Grand Prix Dream

Follow the Money

Big in Japan

Rabbit's Big Adventure

Shaun Tomson's Tunnel Vision

South Africa in Black and White

Mark Richards, Gentleman Killer

Two Fins, More Wins

The Divine Miss M

The Fortune Seekers

California was the sleeping giant of pro surfing. Nothing much changed here during the second half of the '70s in terms of surf-world commerce and production. Wetsuits, trunks, skateboards, skimboards, bodyboards, logo T-shirts, surfboard blanks, car racks, and every other specie of beach culture merchandise—most of it was designed and assembled, packaged, warehoused, and shipped out of Los Angeles or Orange County.

California wave-riding, however, continued to lag. Ultra-orthodox soul surfing and localism were on the wane but by no means defeated, and while the IPS pros rode brightly colored easy-turning boards in the 6'6" range, a lot of Californians were still on long, plain white Hawaiian-style guns. The Age of Aquarius beachfront bromides lived on—a 1977 ad for Santa Monica’s Natural Progression surfboards featured “soul survivor” George Trafton speed-trimming on a 7-foot, 6-inch gun, doing his best to “live in harmony with nature.” Australian pro Mark Richards, in explicit counterpoint, was winning over tens of thousands of eager young new-generation surfers by saying he lived for “sex and tube rides.”

California’s surf-boom hangover persisted, in other words. Pro surfing wasn’t yet completely welcome on the West Coast. Florida had an IPS event. 

 had an IPS event. But for five straight years, from 1976 to 1980, the world circuit carried on without so much as a glance at California. Surfing in general, for that matter, continued to be mostly uninteresting to American culture at large. 

 ran a short feature on the birth of the IPS and a cover story on Pipeline. 

 ran a long profile on Shaun Tomson. Hawaiian pro Laura Blears did a 

 pictorial that included a full-page, full-frontal shot of her straddling a bright red Lightning Bolt surfboard. A few more odds and ends aside, that was about it for surfing coverage in nonsurfing publications.

Australia and South Africa were on an altogether different track. Sydney’s Coca-Cola/2SM Surfabout contest was featured on national news programs; the 

 covered the event with boldface headline grabbers like “Battle of the Boards” and “Superstars Wiped out by Rookies.” The Durban 500 drew huge crowds, and it was front-page news when local boy Shaun Tomson was named South African Sportsman of the Year in 1979 and inducted into the national Sports Hall of Fame.

Pro tour prize money was improving, slowly. IPS winnings weren’t about to put any surfer in the “Jack Nicklaus category,” as world champion Peter Townend blithely predicted. But each year the bottom line improved. In 1976, total pro tour prize-money was just over $77,500. By 1979 it was $160,000. The growth in part reflected the increased presence of corporate sponsors, a handful of whom were convinced, by Fred Hemmings and a few other contest organizers, to take a chance on this “new sport.” It didn’t cost much to get in: primary sponsorship for an IPS event in the 1970s went for about $8,000; auxiliary sponsorships could be had for as little as $500. Coca-Cola was the biggest, most committed IPS corporate sponsor during the tour's formative years. Smirnoff, Avis, Jose Cuervo, Pan Am, Marlboro, and Rolex also threw some chips on the table.

Most of the prize money, however, was still in-house. Surfwear companies like Hang Ten, Stubbies, and Offshore were the IPS sugar daddies, and the wetsuit manufacturers—Rip Curl especially—chipped in as well. Lightning Bolt sponsored an event or two in the mid-'70s, but boardmakers never regained the economic clout they had in the previous decade and were now the industry’s poor cousins.

Surf companies also began to give salary contracts to the top pros. At first, there was a complete industry-wide information blackout about the terms being offered. Paid surfers never went on record to talk about their deals. One world champion later suggested that it was hush-hush because all payments were made under the table. But that wasn’t true, at least for the ranking pros. Career paranoia was more likely why surfers didn't talk with any real specificity about their profession. If you privately felt you weren't making enough, you didn't want to broadcast that fact and risk coming off as a diva. Conversely, if you believed you were at or near the top, you didn't want to rock the boat.

Image was also at stake. It was one thing to hoist up a big oversized cardboard IPS prize-money check, on the beach, at the end of the contest, in front of cheering fans. This had a jackpot strike-it-rich coolness. But negotiating a monthly retainer with a surf company marketing guy in a windowless boardroom somewhere—that made the surfer look like any other downmarket jock hustling for a paycheck.

It eventually came out that the top eight or ten first-generation IPS pros had low-five-figure sponsorship contracts. Newly-crowned world champion Mark Richards, in 1979, added $15,000 in endorsements to $25,000 in prize money, for a $40,000 year-end total. Not bad. Photos also circulated of Richards, in mirrored aviator shades, behind the wheel of his brand-new silver Porsche 911SC. On the other hand, he was still living at home, rent-free, with his parents.

As for the contests themselves, Fred Hemmings, with help from pro surfer Patti Paniccia, added an IPS women’s division in 1977, and Hawaii's Margo Oberg—winner of the 1968 amateur world title as a 15-year-old—to nobody’s surprise, won the championship. More world tour changes soon followed. The starting field for each event was determined by the ratings sheet, not backroom-drafted invitee lists. Judging criteria was better defined, and the judging panel at a given contest, instead of being rounded up by the contest organizer, had to be picked from an IPS-approved list.

Still, for a decade or so, the world tour was never far removed from another not-ready-for-prime-time moment. At a 1977 press conference, female competitors were asked if they "ever surfed naked." Events were canceled with little notice. Prize-money checks bounced, and event-deciding matches featuring the world's best surfers were often held in gurgling knee-high surf—although folly could strike even when the checks were good and the surf was perfect. After one of their own was knocked out of the 1981 Pipeline Masters on an interference penalty, a gang of local Hawaiian surfers rushed the officials stand—two judges leapt from the scaffolding and took cover in a nearby beach house—and made it exceedingly clear that it was in the event’s best interest for organizers to reconsider the call. After a brief administrative huddle, the eliminated surfer was given a slot in the finals.

One IPS development, above all others, pointed toward pro surfing's future. At the 1977 season-opening Stubbies Surf Classic in Queensland, competition director Peter Drouyn introduced the sport to a bracketed, single-elimination, tennis-style man-on-man format. In order to put “a bit of bloody flair” into the proceedings, Drouyn believed you had to do away with the nearly anonymous scrimmaging of multi-competitor heats and have the pros go head to head. He was right. The change was simple and dazzling. Rivalries among surfers were created. The experience for fans was both simplified and magnified.

Burleigh Heads was the Stubbies Classic venue, and clean overhead pointbreak tubes greeted the pros on opening day. The weather was ideal, crowds lined the point, and for six straight days the waves ranged from good to perfect. Local boys Michael Peterson and Wayne Bartholomew continued their long-running competition feud in a dazzling half-hour semifinal that came down to a back-to-back exchange in the closing seconds. Peterson took the heat by a mere 1.5 points. Shaun Tomson and Mark Richards were up next, and Tomson got the longest tuberide of the event—moments after the horn sounded to end the heat. Richards and Peterson made the finals. Richards had the brightest pro tour future of any surfer present that day, while Peterson was undernourished from heroin addiction, and teetering on the edge of a psychosis that would eventually land him in a mental institution. But Burleigh was Peterson’s home break, and some part of him must have known that this was the last hurrah—it was his final all the way.

For years, the 1977 Stubbies was the benchmark against which all pro tour events were measured. The surf was amazing, and the head-to-head battles were compelling. Still, Drouyn’s new format had some problems. It doubled the amount of time required to run the contest, and with just two surfers in the water at any given point (instead of four or six), it meant a lot of downtime between rides. But the Stubbies event proved that man-on-man was the way to go, and it soon became the world tour standard. The pros liked having all that room in the water, and fans—just as Drouyn predicted—responded well when each heat could be viewed as a slug-it-out prizefight.

Pro tour prize money was ramping up. Or was it? Photos circulated of world champ Mark Richards in mirrored aviator shades, behind the wheel of his brand-new silver Porsche 911SC. On the other hand, he was still living at home, rent-free, with his parents.

Chapter: 6

The Fortune Seekers

Follow the Money

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