Matt Warshaw interviewed Corky Carroll in 1996. Quotes were used in a Surfer's Journal feature titled "Green on Blue: Kelly Slater’s Million Dollar Deal, and Other Thoughts on Surfing for Hire." Carroll was 49 when this conversation took place.

Everybody thinks pro surfing began in 1976.

Ugh, I hate it when people say that. Those guys weren't making diddly that year. Pro surfing stared in 1976? Give me a break. I mean, what the hell were 

 doing? Ten years earlier, man, we had all kinds of things going on.

When did you become a professional surfer?

I think it was 1964. I rode for Hobie, and he actually gave me a salary, $80 a week.

Was anybody else getting paid to just surf?

Well, no, let me put it another way. Other guys were getting paid. Like, Phil had his signature model, so he got paid for those, plus he got paid to shape. But I wasn't a shaper or anything like that. I was just a surfer. I got paid to surf.

Just be out there all the time, in the water, on the beach, talking to people. Plus enter all the contests. The $80 was mainly just so I could put gas in the car and drive up and down the coast to the contests. Also, Hobie paid my entry fees and gave me free boards.

Did you keep it a secret? Were you allowed to tell anybody you were getting paid?

Sure, I told people. I was stoked! It wasn't a secret.

Years and years. Even when I started making ten bucks a board for the all the different models I had, I still got a weekly salary on top of that.


I first had one right after Phil got his. Mine had three stringers, and two-color foam. After that I did one called the Flexible, which was stringerless and super light. Like you could actually bend it. Knee-paddling, I could bounce up and down and feel the thing flexing.

Yeah, that one overlapped with the Flexible. There was another one in there somewhere, called the West Coast Model.

That came right after the Mini, right when the boards were going short, then the last one I did with Hobie was the Deadly Flying Glove.

Yeah, that was the deal. Not just with me, but anybody who had a model, it was ten bucks a pop.

Hobie upped your weekly salary too, right?

I worked in the shop a little, but not much, and yeah, my monthly salary went all the way up to a $1,000 a month at the highest.

You had other things going on at the same time, like with Jantzen.

That's right. The Jantzen deal started I think in '65, and lasted the whole rest of my career.

Some. Not much. $1,500 a year, I think it was.

Yeah, that was a good deal, something like $5,000 plus a free bike.

Starting I think in 1965 there were a few pro contests.

Which I did all of, every one. The Tom Morey noseriding thing, then the Smirnoff contests in Santa Cruz. I won just about all of 'em. But even if you won, you know, it wasn't much money. Just a few hundred bucks.


So take me through your career as a pro, in terms of how much you made per year. Starting in 1965.

That was when I got my first model. So it was $80 a week plus what I was making on the boards. Mmmm, so my income in '65 was probably 20 grand.

I remember, that was the year I hit 30 grand. Which seemed like a huge big deal.

It started going down. Probably 34 or 35.

Down to maybe 22 or 23. I retired at the end of '72, right after the world contest, which was in October. Money-wise, the whole thing was getting real grim.

Well, Vietnam was happening. Everyone was dropping out. And there was this mass frustration with the competition scene in California.

I was 25 or 26. Which seemed old at the time!

Why did you quit contests after the '72 world titles?

That thing was just so bad. I remember siting out there for my semifinal heat; it was like 1-foot, high tide, and every now and then a teeny-tiny little wave would break on the outside sandbar. So they start the heat, and for 15 minutes not a single wave came through. Everybody else moved in and starting taking these little things that lapped up on the beach, these 6-inch waves that you could ride for about six feet before they hit wet sand. The heat ended and I didn't catch a wave. I paddled in and went, "That's it. I quit."

, where you were yelling at the judges after the final in the 1971 US Championships?

Oh God. Yeah, they just out-and-out plotted to keep me from winning at Huntington that year. I mean, they had a plan. I actually busted 'em making the plan.


I was playing music at the time, I had a little band. And I was at Captain Jacks in Sunset Beach, it was my first paying gig, and I was coming offstage for a break, and a busboy walks up to me and says, "Hey, all the all the guys from the Huntington contest are in the back room, having a meeting, setting up the contest." So I think, "Far out, I'll go back there and say hi." Just as I'm getting ready to walk in the door, I hear one of those guys saying, "We gotta keep Carroll from wining the damn thing again." So I stop, and someone else says "What are we going to do?" "I don't know, change the scoring system or something."

Yeah! I burst in and said, "Hey, man, Do what you want, I don't give a shit. I'm 

They had this system where you could catch seven waves in a heat, and they scored your best five. You could take an eighth wave, but if you did, it automatically counted in your top five. So here's what happened. I made the final. They send us out for a 20-minute heat, best five out of seven waves, like I said. David Nuuhiwa was in there, too, he was the other favorite. At the end of 20 minutes I was the only guy who had seven waves, and a couple of guys didn't even have five waves. David had, like, three. But I had my seven, I'm good, I was on the beach before the horn blew, I had the thing won, hands down, no questions. Then I hear the announcer saying they're going to extend the heat for 10 minutes! And I was like, "Wait a minute! You can't do that!" But here comes the beach coordinator running down, telling me to paddle back out. I said, "I've already caught seven, I got five good ones, the surf's getting worse by the minute, so I don't need any more waves." And he goes, "No, because they extended the heat they also threw out the wave limit and you can catch as many waves as you want, and it's still best five waves." So I paddle back out, the surf is just junk by this time, and I knew I had the thing in the bag no matter what. Thirty-seconds left, I start paddling in, and just before the horn went off I caught a tiny wave about three feet off the beach, stood off, and stepped off on the sand. Didn't think anything about it. A few minutes later, Del Cannon, one of the judges, came up and said "Why did you take that little wave by the beach?" and I go "What are you talking about?" And he goes, "That little wave knocked you from first to third; you had the thing won." And I explained what the other guy had told me, and Del said 'Well, he was wrong." That's when I lost my temper.

So what was the deal? Why were they out to get you?

I just won too many contests, that's all. After awhile it was just like . . . okay, we need somebody else. It's okay. I was kinda done by that time anyway.

Why were you getting more money than anybody else in California? [Note: Gary Propper of Florida was the only surfer to earn more than Carroll during this period.]

That's a hard one. A lot of different things. One, I was real young when I started getting famous. I won my first US title when I was 15, and I think that just appealed to sponsors. Then there was just the timing of it. Also, I came along right when surfing was going through this huge boom. So that was lucky. Another thing, I realized later, was that I have a good name. It was easy to remember. It sounded surf-y. Corky Carroll is just a surf-dude sounding name. People in Cleveland, you'd ask them if they had ever heard of any surfers, they'd say, "Well, we know about that Corky guy."

Also, you just put yourself out there in a huge way.

For sure. I went to every contest known to man. I competed every weekend. I went to the East Coast and surfed all the events back there. And not just that, but where the other guys from California would fly in, surf the contest, fly back, I'd drive out there a month ahead of time and stop in, like, Boston, then drive down the whole coast, selling stuff. I had boards, I had O'Neill wetsuits, I had wax, Bay Standards surf racks, all these things, and I'd hit all the shops and actually take orders, like a sales rep. For me, starting around 16 or 17, it was never like I was just getting up in the morning and going down to the beach to surf. Which I was, actually. I was out in the water six hours a day. But at the same time I'd do things like drive to San Diego and have lunch with a dealer, sell him a few boards, then go surf with him at Ocean Beach Pier. I was always, 

Yeah, and that's another thing. When surfers started getting on TV shows, none of them had much to say. But when I got on there, I'd be talking, telling jokes, having a good time. So they'd usually have me back. I was never afraid to embarrass myself, and that's really important if you're going to be in the public eye. You can't be all freaked out, "Oh, I gotta be cool, I can't blow it." I just tried to have fun, and didn't much care if I looked cool or not.

I was on local talk shows all the time. Then some bigger ones, too, talk shows and game shows. I was on 

I did a skateboard demonstration, yeah. This was when Hobie first came out with skateboards. I remember at one point I looked at the camera and went, "This is a Hobie skateboard. H-O-B-I-E. You pronounce it 'Hobie' not 'hobby'." And Hobie did a backflip and cut me a $500 bonus check.

On the other hand, I remember as a kid that you were the guy people loved to hate.

That's true too. Starting around 1968 there was this whole anti-commercial thing going on, and anybody that went out and promoted themselves, they thought that was real uncool. That, and I didn't talk about drugs. Which was unfair, 'cause I smoked as much pot as anyone, I just didn't advertise it. I didn't make a big deal out of it. Others guys did. So there were people who thought I was lame because I wasn't talking about all the pot I was smoking. But really I think it came down to the fact that I was in every single contest, and getting my picture in the magazine all the time, and making money—all that stuff wasn't cool in the late '60s, early '70s

How did you spend your money? I remember in Pacific Vibrations you were driving a nice-looking Mercedes.

I bought a duplex in the Palisades above Capo beach, and I put a lot of money into that, fixed it up and built onto it. That was my investment. I put a lot into fixing that place up. I bought a blue 911 Porsche. I bought a trailer and parked it in Mammoth. I spent a lot on travel. I'd fly to the Islands, fly back, drive up to Mammoth, fly back to the Islands, then off to Barbados or something with Rolf Aurness and his dad, and they always go first-class so I had to go first-class. I spent a lot of money just going back and forth between California and Hawaii.

No, not really. Which was a mistake on my part. I could have invested in Op when it started and didn't. I thought Op was a dumb name and nobody would buy the clothes.

You must have made a nice chunk from buying a house in Capo Beach so early.

Corky Carroll (1996)

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