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

Of the four IPS tour events in Japan in 1979, Mark Richards won the opener, Wayne Bartholomew took the third event, and Shaun Tomson rode to victory in the fourth. No surprises. These were the three headlining stars from 

, which was still playing to full houses in beach towns everywhere. Tomson had won a world title two years earlier, Bartholomew was defending champ, and Richards was a few months away from winning the first of his four world titles.

There were other exceedingly talented pros out there, of course, starting with (in no particular order) Ian Cairns and Peter Townend, agile Michael Ho of Sunset Beach, Bondi’s lightning-fast teenage phenom Cheyne Horan, bruising power surfer Dane Kealoha, and an afro-haired Honolulu regularfooter with the incredible polyrhythmic name of Montgomery “Buttons” Kaluhiokalani. These and a dozen more first-generation world tour pros helped reinvent and revitalize the sport during the mid- and late-'70s.

Yet Richards, Bartholomew, and Tomson drew the most attention, and rightly so. They defined not just the nascent pro movement but an entire surfing era. They raised the performance bar, the way top-flight surfers always do. More importantly, they gave surfing an image and attitude that nearly everyone in the sport was comfortable with. Surfing’s group identify had been wobbly for years. During the first half of the previous decade, authority figures like 

 publisher John Severson had tried to arm-twist the sport into a kind of American Bandstand wholesomeness. The backlash that followed—with its intersecting strains of localism and soul-surfing militancy—often seemed anti-fun as well as anti-commercial.

 surfers brought the sport back to a truer version of itself. They were soulful but not ponderously so, aggressive without being threatening, competitive and casual in more or less equal measure. They helped make the whole show more lively and colorful and fun, and part of it was just seeing how much fun 

 were having. When soul-surfing godhead Gerry Lopez smiled, he was the Mona Lisa, reserved and all-knowing and mysterious. Bartholomew, Richards, and Tomson, in contrast, grinned like kids on summer vacation.

Bartholomew in particular wrung out every bit of drama and adventure from his surfing life. He’d been a Gold Coast wild child, quick enough on the soccer field to earn the nickname “Rabbit,” smart enough to earn 

 honors as a schoolboy, and poor enough to steal wallets from beachgoing tourists to help his mother pay rent. (Bartholomew said his legendary competitive drive came “from being hungry; from going to school without lunch money.”)

Michael Peterson and Peter Townend both grew up near Bartholomew, and the three shared a wave-riding adolescence in the beautiful, not-yet-crowded Gold Coast beaches and points. Bartholomew won the first of his three Queensland open division state titles in 1973, just before graduating high school; for three years he entered every prize-money event in Australia and slowly worked his way onto the invite lists for the big pro events in Hawaii.

Bartholomew's results faltered in 1976, which was proof, some of the pros said, that he was overrated. Maybe so. Bartholomew wasn’t a great natural talent, and what often came through in 1976 was the enormous effort he put into his rides. But at 21, he was still improving. The turns were getting sharper and better placed. The lines he drew were now better defined. On top of that, Bartholomew had expressive hands, a James Dean-like tube slouch, and a knack for throwing a bit of flair into his kickouts—a part of the ride most surfers paid no attention to.

Above all, Bartholomew understood before any of his peers that the emerging pro tour had to be viewed in strategic and tactical terms. He knew how to analyze a surf break for maximum competitive advantage; when to surf full strength and when to hold something in reserve; what to eat and drink over the course of an event. He had an assortment of plays and attacks to be used according to wave conditions and his opponent.

Closest to Bartholomew's heart—and soon recognized as his professional trademark—was psychological gamesmanship. Etiquette demanded that the pros mill about during an event in a roped-off “competitor’s area,” but Bartholomew liked to remove himself completely until just a few moments before his heat, when he’d suddenly materialize in the lineup. He could go catatonic just before a big match. Or he might launch into a frenzied round of shadow-boxing. Michael Peterson had introduced the psyche-out ploy to surfing contests a few years earlier, but Bartholomew turned it into a black art. “He’d create this drama about himself,” Ian Cairns recalled, “and it just overwhelmed a lot of guys.” Mark Richards once said he was “frightened to surf against him.” More than any other pro of his generation, Bartholomew had an insatiable drive to win. “You can never, 

 write me off,” he said years after retiring, but still speaking in present tense. “And not just in surfing. Tennis, pool, any sport or game—you never count me out, ‘cause I will come back from the dead.”

Competition lent shape and purpose to Bartholomew’s life, but it wasn’t actually an end in itself. Style and showmanship; putting himself in a thrilling situation, and telling the tale afterward—

 were the things that really counted. Bartholomew needed to be champion because it made his life more compelling; it made for a better story. Not just to others, but to himself. On the plane to Honolulu, Bartholomew closed his eyes and became Frodo Baggins creeping toward Mordor. In his mind, the running feud he had with Michael Peterson was surfing’s answer to the Ali-Frazier fights. A newly-issued IPS event schedule didn’t appear to him as a “season,” but a “campaign” to be approached, as Bartholomew wrote in his autobiography, like “Alexander the Great, leading horsemen over the plains of Sidon.”

All of this should have come off as overwrought, even delusional, but there was always a core truth at the center of his Bartholomew's exaggeration and embroidery (rivalries are exciting; the North Shore is terrifying). His vision was generous as well. Bartholomew naturally put himself in the middle of his tales, but he rendered the supporting cast in careful, loving detail. Surfing wasn’t 

 moveable feast, in other words. It was everybody's.

At the end of the 1977 IPS tour, Bartholomew was ranked #1 going into the season-closing events in Hawaii. But a Sunset Beach wipeout left him with two broken ribs, and he was lucky to struggle past the wire a few weeks later, his torso still heavily wrapped in tape, to finish the year at #2.

Three months later Bartholomew opened the 1978 season with a win at the Stubbies Classic, and from that point on never once lost the ratings lead—he cruised to a world title with room to spare.

It was a timely win. Fred Hemmings was pushing IPS competitors to clean up their act and become TV-ready athletes, and Ian Cairns and Peter Townend had started calling themselves the Bronzed Aussies—mainly to feed their own PR buzz, but also to try and bring a team concept into the sport. To many surfers, these were both vaguely disturbing trends. Bartholomew, the new champ, never said anything against Hemmings or the Bronzed Aussies. On the other hand, he wasn’t especially clean-cut—his kept his hair in a neglected surfer-shag and proudly drove a $50 Holden sedan with see-through floorboards—and he also understood that surfing was by nature a solitary pursuit. Everyone got together later for a few beers, sure, but you paddled out alone, not with your teammates.

The IPS tour was still finding itself in 1978, but the period was already being called “the professional era,” and the distance between everyday surfers and those at the top had become wider and more pronounced. Bartholomew may not have actually prevented a surf-world schism—the sport had already been proven capable of regulating itself—but he claimed a championship while remaining aligned with the legions of surfers with salt-encrusted hair and junker cars. As 

 filmmaker Bill Delaney put it, Bartholomew “made the whole show bigger,” yet at the same time he never forced the sport to be something it wasn't. Unless he was paddling up your back during a heat, Bartholomew was a hard surfer not to love.

Rabbit turned the competitive psych-out ploy into a black art. He'd go catatonic before a big match. Or launch into a frenzied round of shadow-boxing. “He created this drama about himself," a rival later said, “and it just overwhelmed a lot of guys.”

Chapter: 6

The Fortune Seekers

Rabbit's Big Adventure

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