Is Surfing Hip?

Lisa Andersen Surfs Better Than You

Killer Cute

Kelly Slater is Just Warming Up

Rebel for Hire

I Believe I Can Fly

A Monster in Half Moon Bay

Mark Foo's Last Ride

Open Throttle

Laird Means Lord

Tahitian Scream

A Webcam for Every Wave

Last Call for Print Media

Taylor Steele Likes it Rough

Searching for the Perfect Phrase

Hollywood Tries Again

Thirty is the New Twenty

Andy Irons' Poetic Fury

The Beast and Beyond

A Dance with the Past

Foam is Dead, Long Live Foam

Nature Gets a Makeover

Surf in a Box

The End of History

The Ride of Your Life

With four world titles to her credit and a billion-dollar industry built largely in her image, Lisa Andersen by all rights should have been 

 definitive Floridian surfer. It didn’t work out that way. In 1985, the same year Andersen ran away from Ormond Beach to restart her life in California, a cupid-faced 13-year-old named Kelly Slater was darting like a hummingbird across the weak central Florida surf on a custom-made 4-foot 9-inch tri-fin, getting ready to win the boys’ division of the US Surfing Championships.

Slater was from Cocoa Beach, less than 70 miles down the coast from Ormond. Andersen and Slater were both poised to become the sport’s most dominant figures in the 1990s. But where Andersen tapered off just past where she could be called the best ever—up to that point, at least—Slater hit the same mark and kept ascending. He didn’t just break competition records, he ran the numbers up until they seemed disconnected from those of his superstar peers. World titles, for instance: Tom Carroll had two, Tom Curren had three, Mark Richards had four. Slater won six in the 1990s, took a three-year break, then came back and picked up five, for a grand total of 11. Surfer Poll Awards: Carroll, one; Richards, three; Curren, eight. Slater . . . 19.

Over the course of a career whose length itself is without precedent in virtually all of sport (still competing at a world-class level as of 2019), Slater played guitar onstage with Pearl Jam, starred in his own PlayStation video game, was rendered in 20-foot-high statuary, and made 

-like escapes from crying mobs of female fans. Bruce Weber photographed him. Cocoa Beach named a street in his honor. On 

’s 2009 list of the fifty greatest surfers of all time, Slater finished on top. (Duke Kahanamoku was second; Tom Curren third.) He dated, in order, Pamela Anderson, Gisele Bundchen, and Cameron Diaz. Moving into an area that seemed literally superhuman—the creation of perfect surf—Slater designed and funded and put his name on a wavepool that seemed to change the very nature of the sport itself.

“Kelly Slater is, with absolutely no equivocation, the biggest surf star of the modern era,” one surf journalist said. “How utterly convenient that he is also the best wave-rider.”

Slater’s announcement that he would be turning pro in the summer of 1990 triggered a bidding war among surfing’s three biggest companies. He flew out to California and signed a deal with Quiksilver worth close to $200,000 annually. Business completed, he then returned to finish his senior year at Cocoa Beach High School, where he graduated with a 4.0 grade-point average and was voted Homecoming King.

Slater convincingly won his first event as a professional, a non-ASP contest held at Trestles, at one point scoring three perfect 10s in a single heat. But things got harder on the world tour. He finished his rookie year ranked #43, and there was talk that maybe Slater wasn’t up to the rigors of big-league competition. He didn’t pace himself during an event. He wiped out too often. He got rattled.

Wiser heads believed Slater was just going through an adjustment period. Aussie surf journalist Derek Hynd called him an “era-changer” more than a year before he won a pro tour event, and 

 claimed he’d already “broken the establishment wide open.” Slater’s wave-riding outside of the competitive arena had only improved during his rookie year—to the point where, at age 19, he was by far the most progressive and inventive surfer in the world. He just hadn’t yet figured out how to consistently put it together during a 20-minute heat.

High-performance surfing at that point was still largely about “power surfing,” tidily described by master practitioner Tom Carroll as “burying a rail, at speed, holding it, and driving the turn as far as possible.” The explosive off-the-top, the haymaker cutback, the trench-digging bottom turn— these were the building blocks for the high performer, as they had been since the shortboard revolution. Power was integral. As with boxing, tennis, or any other velocity-based sport, power was in fact fashion-proof—it never went out of style.

It barely registered that Slater, even as a rookie, was becoming a fine power surfer in his own right. What attracted everyone’s gaping attention was that he’d already invented a half-dozen or so acrobatic variations on the standard moves. Riding a slender tri-fin, Slater would delay his pivot move off the top by a half beat so that the entire tail section of his board fanned through the air above the curl. Midway through a cutback he’d shift forward and punch down with his back foot, throwing the turn into a controlled drift. He brought a second axis of motion into play. A pure power surfer like Tom Carroll could take a wild up-and-down course on a wave, but his board always moved forward, as if it were on a monorail. Sliding of any kind—coming out of that forward track—had almost always been the mark of a poorly executed turn. Slater broke this rule constantly. He often came out of a turn with his board going sideways or even backward.

There was more: looping 360-degree carves. Aerial moves. Origami-like body positioning that allowed Slater to ride deeper in the tube, especially on his backhand, even in cataclysmic double-suck barrels at Pipeline. “He invents things so fast,” 

 magazine said, “people have trouble naming them.”

Slater’s rise didn’t happen in a vacuum. Another dozen or so young teenagers pros were riding the same kind of feathery boards to the same inventive purpose. The surf media soon identified them, collectively, as the “New School.” Among the best were Shane Powell and Shane Herring of Australia, a fearless Big Island regularfooter named Shane Dorian, and San Diego’s Rob Machado, who kept a Lopez-like sense of flow even while twisting through the latest upside-down and backward moves.

All of the New Schoolers were dynamic and exciting. But none were on Kelly Slater’s level. The New School may have been a group movement, 

 magazine opined, but “it pretty much begins and ends with Slater.” The irresistible comparison was with Tom Curren, and the consensus soon took shape that each surfer ruled a different domain. Nobody, Curren included, could touch Slater for athleticism. But Slater, while he synched his moves together perfectly and maintained transcendental calm in the hairiest situations, couldn’t match Curren for purity of style. That counted for a lot. Even as Slater picked off every contest record Curren ever held, one by one, Curren never fully lost his claim as the ultimate surfer.

Slater notched his first world-tour win halfway through the 1992 season and moved to the front of the ratings. In Brazil, at the next-to-last contest of the year, he had enough points to become world champion. He then closed out the year with a win at the Pipeline Masters. At 20, he was the youngest men’s division world-tour champion.

Knee surgery helped keep Slater out of contention in 1993, and the title went to Pipeline ace Derek Ho—Hawaii’s first pro-era men’s champion. Slater then went on his great world-tour tear, winning five championships in a row. In 1994 he did it with an event to spare. In 1996 and 1997 he did it with 

 events to spare, and over the course of one particularly superhuman six-month period he won ten of 14 events.

Slater’s 1995 title was the most dramatic. While he was ranked #3 going into the last contest of the season, the Pipeline Masters, he was all but mathematically out of contention. An old-school power surfer and malcontent from Oahu’s West Side named Sunny Garcia not only had a comfortable ratings lead going into the showdown event, but was the defending three-time Hawaiian Triple Crown champion. Second-ranked Rob Machado wasn’t anywhere near as credentialed in Hawaii, but had been the “It” surfer for much of the year—he’d posted two wins, same as Garcia—and was an excellent tuberider. Three things had to happen For Slater to retain the championship. First, he had to win the Masters. Anything less and he’d come up short. Second, Garcia had to place 17th or below, something he hadn’t done all year. And finally, Machado had to finish no higher than 3rd. This set of outcomes was so unlikely that Slater, before the contest, told 

 that he was “already resigned to losing the title.” There were no rivalries involved. Slater and Machado were golf buddies and played in a band together, and Slater was godfather to one of Garcia’s kids. These relationships made the prospect of losing a little easier. But not much. “This is my whole life,” Slater said prior to the Masters. “I have very high expectations for myself, and when I don’t achieve a goal, it hurts.”

The contest began. Garcia, incredibly, surfed his worst heat of the year to finish 17th. That was one condition met. The following afternoon, with Pipeline double-overhead and perfect, Slater got ready for a do-or-die semifinal heat against Machado.

Waves aside, the Masters that afternoon had all the pomp and glamour of a corporate picnic. It was a Monday, so there were less than 500 spectators on hand. Judges and contest officials occupied a split-level scaffolding draped in nylon sponsors’ banners, and a mix tape of current FM hits played over a scratchy-toned PA system. Contestants sat on the beach or hung out in the oceanfront yards of nearby houses. Slater and Machado were called to the officials area. Slater put on a red Lycra competition vest; Machado was in black. An airhorn sounded a few minutes past noon, and the heat began.

After taking a mulligan on his first wave, Slater came out of a long backside tube and carved a figure-eight cutback. Score: 9.67. Machado started with a pair of throwaways, then tracked smoothly through an eight-foot-by-eight-foot barrel. The wave thundered across the reef for five seconds, then spat Machado out like a watermelon seed. Cheers, whistles, and a perfect 10 score. Slater then navigated his way through a deep Backdoor set wave—a shorter but more difficult ride than Machado’s—for a matching 10. On two waves in a row, Machado raced through long tube sections only to get shut down at the exit, turning what should have been a pair of 9-plus rides into junk scores.

The real rapture began when Slater disappeared inside an exploding Backdoor grotesquery and somehow found an exit 30 or 40 yards down the line. The judges were stuck. They’d already given out two perfect scores for rides that were clearly inferior to the one Slater had just turned in. Everybody shrugged and punched in their 10s—it was a grievous underscore. Two minutes later Slater off-handedly put together another near-perfect ride, and with the heat barely half over his three-wave total was 29.7 out of 30.

It was obvious how the rest of the afternoon would play out: Slater took the Masters, the Triple Crown, and the world title, all in one deft motion. It was the most thrilling season finale the world tour had ever produced. Machado himself felt it, even as he watched his one and only chance at a world title slip away. With five minutes left in the heat, he came gliding out of a beautiful Pipeline tube—an 8.7 ride; not enough to gain any ground—and saw Slater in the channel. Machado adjusted course. Slater sat up on his board. Both were grinning as they reached out and slapped palms.

Beyond the contest winds, Kelly Slater turned himself into a modern celebrity, ready to live his life in public. He out-confessed every pro of his generation, going on record often to speak about family troubles (broken home, alcoholic father, struggling working-class single mother), his accidental daughter (the result of a summer fling), and his often-hapless love life. He knew how to create drama, overtly and subtlety. In 2003, just before paddling out for a world-title showdown at Pipeline with Hawaiian rival Andy Irons, Slater darted across the beach and crouched down behind Irons, warmly grasped his shoulders, leaned in close to whisper “I love you, man” then smoothly jogged off while Irons looked around, puzzled.

Unlike Dora, Lopez, and Curren, Slater seemed to have no qualms whatsoever and maxing out his commercial potential. He appeared in an endless stream of surf-world ads, movies, videos, and DVDs, and put his name on a storeroom full of signature products. Crossing the great mainstream divide, he posed for a Versace underwear ad and did a TV spot for L’Oreal cosmetics. Most infamously, in 1993 Slater took the role of Malibu High surf king Jimmy Slade on 

, the globally-popular lifeguard-drama TV series. 

 was Slater's biggest career blunder. Surfing fans jeered—with good reason; in one scene, Slater wrestled a board-stealing octopus—and the time he spent on the show likely cost him the 1993 world title. To his credit, after appearing in 10 episodes, Slater quit.

But in general, Slater performed remarkably well as the surfing’s frontman, navigating his way through a long, image- and product-pumped career with little more than an occasional light breeze of backlash. The Third Boom went down a little easier for hardcore surfers than either of the first two booms, in part because Slater helped to present surfing in a more authentic light than had happened in the past. (It made a difference that he was with surfwear-favorite Quiksilver, for example, whereas Second Boom champion Tom Curren had been sponsored by Op, a department-store-only line that had been laughably unhip since the late 1970s.) The rank and file didn’t necessarily approve of Slater raising the level of commercialism. But with two booms already behind them, most surfers understood that the sport was going be sold, and sold big, one way or another. The real question had become: Is the sell-job embarrassing or not? 

 certainly was. The rest of Slater's commercial efforts were not.

Slater played guitar onstage with Pearl Jam, got the cover of 

, was rendered in twenty-foot-high statuary, dated Pamela Anderson, and made 

-like escapes from screaming mobs of fans. “He is the biggest surf star of the modern era,” one surf journalist said. “How utterly convenient that he is also the best wave-rider.”

Chapter: 8

The Ride of Your Life

Kelly Slater is Just Warming Up

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