Matt Warshaw interviewed 19-year-old David Eggers in 1989. Four years earlier, Eggers, one of the most successful amateur surfers of all time, dropped out of 10th grade to turn pro and surf on the WCT. Eighteen months later he was back home in San Diego, career in shambles, with a growing drug habit, and burning every bridge there was to burn. In early 1989, after brief stint in rehab Eggers said he was ready for a comeback. Quotes from this interview were used for "Whatever Happened to David Eggers?" which ran in the February 1989 issue of SURFER.

No, I was born in Mountain View, near San Jose, but we moved to Claremont when I was I think one. 

I bodyboarded and skateboarded first, then started surfing in 1976, at Pacific Beach.

I think 1980, a local WSA contest. Boys division.

Did you do other sports when you were a kid?

Just backyard football. I played soccer when I was, like, eight. 

I remember there was a year where you were the top-ranked surfer in Boys and Juniors division, both. Did you ever count all your trophies from your amateur days?

You used to show up at contests in mobile home with your family, and I remember people were kind of jealous or even resentful that you had it so good in terms of support. Did you feel that way at the time?

I had it easy, yeah. It was obvious. But to do what I did, I think you'd almost have to have a set-up like that. Aside from being a good surfer, that whole support system is what pushed me through; being able to rest, to get out of the sun, get away from other people—the basic things you need to do to win. It was like a pit crew, my mom and dad. They took a lot of time off work for those contests.

Were they like that right from the start?

No, when I first got into it, my parents were under the impression that all surfers were bums, dope-heads, that kind of thing. Then a guy I knew, he owned a  surf shop, pulled them aside and said, "This kid has the most potential I've ever seen." They came to my next contest, I won, and they did a total about-face. 

No, not really. People always said "little league parents" and stuff, but that was crap. There was no pressure from them. They just said, "Go get 'em, good luck," and that was all. Sure, it helped. The mobile home and all that. But it was the more the way I went about it. I could have had a tent on the beach and been by myself. I just had some things figured out already. LIke, I don't think the other kids realized that surfing is not a team sport, you know? You don't pal around on the beach. You escape, you eat alone, you find somewhere quiet to rest, you do everything by yourself. 

You were on the NSSA National Team for a few years, how did that go over with [NSSA coaches] Ian Cairns and Peter Townend?

I listened a lot to Ian and PT. But they never said a thing about being alone. They wanted that whole team thing. And that's just something I could never do, not as an amateur and not as a pro. They wanted us to travel together, for instance, and that's bullshit. You're staying with some guy, or hanging out with him, and eventually you're going to have that person in a heat and that's not going to work. I can't go up to a guy before a heat and say, "Good luck, buddy." When I shook somebody's hand on the beach after a heat, I never meant it. That was just part of the game?

You knew all this right from the beginning?

No, but I figured it out real quick. And that's when I started winning. Put it this way. Everybody in the world can do something really well. Everybody. They just have to find it. I found out what I'm good at really young. But it wasn't just the natural ability, it was the competitiveness. I learned that if I wanted something enough, I will find a way to get it. I can be ruthless; that was just my way. It was the only way I could do it, in fact. So those years as an amateur—I loved the feeling that nobody could touch me. Where I was at the time, at that level, I was the best. And I held that position for quite a few years.

You were known for getting really upset when you didn't win. 

Yeah, that's true. I'd get so pissed off. I'd cry, even. I'd go home thinking, "I have everything, I did everything, why didn't I win?"

Oh yeah. That was fun. There's nothing better to me than looking into somebody's eyes and seeing the agony of defeat. 

When you were winning just about everything near the end of your amateur career, even surfing against much older competitors, did anybody try and intimidate you?

The hard-look thing. I took out so many older guys 'cause they'd think, "I'll just walk over there, stare this kid down and he'll crack." Yeah, right. I ate that shit up. I surfed that much harder because of it. I mean, I was a 

How did you make the decision, do you remember? 

It wasn't a quick decision, exactly. But I do remember waking up one morning, the surf was unreal, and I knew it was going to be like the 50th time that semester that I was going to miss school. It was kind of like, "What's the point?" 

Did all the success you'd had as an amateur go into the decision?

For sure. There was pretty much nothing else I could do as an amateur, and I didn't want to wait around for the next World Contest [held every other year], and I knew there were companies who were ready to pay some bucks for me to turn pro. 

How long did it take for you to make the decision?

Well, I'm not one to hesitate. Maybe three days from that morning till I actually quit going to school. 

We sat down, my parents and my school counselor, and I said, "Look, this is what I want to do." I said something like, it was too much for me to be competing in the water and also competing against these books. I had to pick one or the other. 

Did it take long for your parents to come around?

No, not really. Then once they saw the contracts being signed [with Gotcha and Body Glove, Egger's two main sponsors], and saw some money coming in . . . . 

How much money did you make when you turned pro?

A hell of a lot more than any other people who turned pro that year. 

You got some decent results in 1986 as a rookie but never made the Top 16. What happened, do you think? Were you too young, or was it just that the competition was so much harder on the world tour, or the travel, or all of it?

It's a lot of stress, and yeah I probably was too young. I mean, you're dragging around 60 pounds of boards, you don't know where you're staying, it's a lot for a kid. 

You had a hard time with some of the surfers on tour, right? 

Yeah, well. I gotta hand it to them. I was just a kid and they knew it. They drove me into the ground. It worked. I'm gone. They can have it. 

The guys I was competing against, some of them. But more importantly, the guys on my own team.

They resented me coming in and getting this big piece of the pie. What are you going to do when this new punk kid comes along and gets so much money? You're going to drive him into the ground, like I said. You're going to make him ride in the trunk. He gets the last bed, the last shower, last everything. It's something rookie's go through, I know. But for me, it was a little bit harsh. 

You got really hazed by the Gotcha team that first year on the North Shore. They tied you up with surf leashes one night. 

I guess it was a growing experience. I have no hard feelings; I'll probably laugh about it for the rest of my life. But I was just 16, you know? 

It seems like that was kind of the beginning of the end for your time on tour.

Actually, that was the heaviest night. It was a mistake by them. You don't set someone off like that who's got what I've got within me. At the time, yeah, I was actually going to kill one of those guys. When they tied me up—if I hadn't gotten away finally and cooled down, I would have killed one of them. I would have. 

They would say you were asking for it, all year you'd been doing stuff to provoke them.

You know why they'd say that? 'Cause I was threatening them, and they didn't like it. So, yeah, I was a punk kid. I did some shit. But nothing that radical, and nothing worth what they did to me. That was so fucked up, what they did. [Eggers' voice suddenly goes calm.] Put it this way. When I get my thing rolling, I'll remember who they were. I can shut my eyes and still see their faces, from that night. Next time I get one of them in a heat, they'll remember too. They fucked up. 

[Gotcha team manager Mike Cruickshank had this to say about Eggers: "He had a really bad attitude. You'd tell him not to do something and he'd turn around, five minutes later, and do it right in front of you. On purpose. He was cock of the walk, and the rest of us had to kneel before him, no matter who they were, even though he was just 16. He'd never clean up after himself. He never paid for food. Or if he did, he'd hide it and then eat everybody else's food. Never washed a dish. Never tidied up. Never listened to the older guys when it came down to getting ready for a contest because he already knew everything."]

You finished that rookie season rated #36. You'd been #1 as an amateur for so many years, was it hard to be so far from the top all of a sudden? Did that have anything to do with your decision to quit?

No, that had nothing at all to do with it. For most of the year I was up in the top 30. I felt I was winning, put it that way. I beat Hans Hedemann at the Op Pro. I beat Tom Carroll in Brazil. I was shooting for the top 30, which was maybe stupid. I should have shot for the top 16. But I was okay with finishing #36. I think that's a damn good placing for a 16-year-old on his first time out. [Pauses, thinks, starts over.] I didn't end up where I wanted to be, actually. I ended up four places out [Eggers contracts had performance clauses tied to his finishing the top 32], and it was because of those idiots heckling me. Its difficult to talk about. It was a trying time. There was a hell of a lot of pressure there at the end, for sure, having to make the top 32, and that broke me down too. I tell you one thing. If I could have done the tour and just stayed alone, like Tom Curren, I could have been in the top 16 right off the bat. I know it. If someone could have set me up and managed me in the right way, I'd still be there today.

I started thinking about it after the Coke contest.

 [Note: the 1986 tour extended into 1987, with two events in Australia.]

 I was upset about how things had gone at the end, and I didn't know who to talk to, so I ended up not calling anybody.

Yeah, I should have called my sponsors and talked it over, like, "Look, this isn't what I want to do. Sorry." But I didn't, and obviously they were upset. They'd put all this money into me and here I was quitting. But yeah, I didn't really say anything to anybody. I wasn't crying to Mommy or Daddy. I just held it in and tried to let things cool down within myself. 

Did drugs come into the picture after you quit or while you were still on tour?

I never did drugs as an amateur. Ever. I jumped on tour, starting meeting people at parties, and all of a sudden—things happen. I had money, I had fame, and I had the attitude. Everything was new. I was overwhelmed. 

At first, yeah. But then I figured, well, actually, this looks really fun. And it was! Girls, parties, all of it. I had it all. I was 16 and could do pretty much whatever I wanted. No responsibility. All I had to do was show up somewhere and surf. Then I'd go home, call my friends, get a limo, and we were off. I learned how to surf as an amateur. I learned how to party as a pro. Then after I quit, my confidence was gone and I didn't have much to do with my time except party and hang out with friends. 

There were rumors you were shooting heroin.

There were so many rumors. Here's one. Me and Archy [fellow California pro Matt Archbold] are in Japan for a contest, riding around Niijima on these little scooters we rented. We're ripping the place up, doing doughnuts, having fun. And yeah, maybe we're breaking a few traffic laws, but hey, we're kids. We're NOT drunk or high. Just out messing around. So I end up doing a doughnut on this little patch of sand which turns out to be right in front of the police station. I mean, there's maybe two cops on the whole island. But they run out, wave me in, I don't have an international license, blah, blah, blah. But they don't even care. They kept me in there for half-hour 'cause they wanted to know about the surf contest. They just wanted to rap. And I had a great time. So a month goes by, I get back home, and the first thing I hear is that I've been bushed for heroin in Japan, after getting caught shooting up in an alley. 

For the record: I've never been in jail. People out there think I've done time, and I haven't. I got thrown in the drunk tank one, that's all. 

That lasted about six months. But you know what, there's a kid sitting on the beach right now, at this moment, smoking base. And there's a guy sitting in a high-rise in LA, at this moment, selling real estate or something, smoking base. It's everywhere. It's an epidemic. But, you know, I fucked up. Big time. I fucked up, partied for two years, and went through a program. To get back to your question, it was fast-lane stuff but there were no needles. 

Things are fine with my family. No, actually, I'm not going to say everything is fine, not always. It never is, not at age one, age two, or 22 or 52. Families have problems. But I'm living at home and things are okay. On the other hand, I'm 19 and it's probably time I get my things  together and together and see about finding a place of my own.

No. I should say here, Rusty said I could sweep out his shaping bay for new boards. [Rusty Preisendorfer was Eggers' longtime boardmaker.] This was a few months ago, and I probably should have said "yes." But at the time I felt that, considering I've been riding his boards for close to 11 years now, it was insulting. That's not what I think now. I understand what Rusty was trying to do and I wish I would have done what he asked. Hopefully I'll get another chance to sweep his place. 

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