Matt Warshaw recorded this interview with Jack Shipley in 1994. Quotes were used in "Stayin' Alive: 1976 and the Birth of the World Professional Surfing Circuit," published in the Spring 1995 issue of Surfer's Journal. Shipley was 53 at the time.

You've been a surf contest judge for how long?

You were the top judge when the IPS launched. What was your actual title?

Yeah. Not much, but not bad, at least for the times. I think it was $150 a day for me, and the other guys got $100.

No, not at all. Each country had its own judges that year, and there was no coordination whatsoever from contest to contest. It was still just a bunch of individual events that we kind of tied together into a tour. It was a free for all, really.

You've judged every Pipe Masters, ever, right?

Even the very first one, where there were like 10 people involved?

I think I was the first person Fred [Hemmings] called.

Oh good, I want to talk about Fred. So here we are, almost 20 years since the tour started, and there's still some pretty heated discussion about who really got the thing off the ground. Fred, or the Australians—PT and Ian [Peter Townend and Ian Cairns].

Easy, no question, it was Fred. Fred was the main player. Without his commitment, without his brute force—which is Fred's style, all the way; you know, "Dead-Ahead Fred"—it wouldn't have happened when it did. He wanted a pro circuit, and he wanted it right now. Fred wasn't a man of great plans, but he was a man of action.

In practical terms, he had no fear approaching sponsors. That, plus he was just so forceful that people fell in behind him. Nobody but Fred at that point could have gotten everybody in line.

At first, really, Randy was just Fred's assistant. Later, when Fred became less involved, Randy took over.

Actually, let me take that back a little. Randy was more than an assistant. He was sort of the guy out front. Fred's not what you'd call a people person. Randy was much more effective at working with people, especially the surfers.

The whole organization wasn't much to start with, right? Randy says the original IPS "office" was his kitchen table.

Yeah, but you have to start somewhere, and again that's why you have to credit Fred. The IPS may not have had much polish, but he put it out there and said, "this is it, this is what we've got, let's make it work."

Tell me about pro surfing before the IPS.

In a way, the world seemed so much bigger, just because there was so little connection between Hawaii, Australia, South Africa, and California. I'm talking about the early '70s. People didn't travel as much. It was just a small group of surfers who went around the world, and an even smaller group who were doing the pro contests. That was true even after the tour started. When I finally got to Australia, in 1977, and watched Michael Peterson win the Stubbies, I was just blown completely away. The idea that a surfer of that caliber had been more or less hidden from all of us in Hawaii. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was stunning.

But in another way, the world seemed smaller because for us it was almost all Hawaii. Everybody came here. Surfers, photographers, filmmakers. You had to. Whereas Hawaiians didn't really need to go anywhere else.

Tell me about Ian and PT, and what they brought to the deal.

Honestly, we knew them for their surfing, not as organizers. We knew them for their ability in the water.

PT was never a truly great surfer. He looked flashy, you know, with the pink board and everything, but actually he was very blue-collar. Peter brought his lunch box every day, came into each contest with a plan, a goal, and if you made a mistake in a heat, he'd beat you. And because everybody made mistakes back then, Peter became world champ.

Ian, on the other hand, was one of the great monster power surfers of all time. I loved the way he surfed.

But as far as world tour organizing went?

Nothing much. Or not that I was aware of. You know who really impressed me that way, though? Peter Drouyn. He was way more of a player in those early days than Ian or PT. Drouyn is really the unsung hero from that period. His mind worked on a higher level. He impressed me with his surfing but staggered me with his thinking. I mean, just the man-on-man concept alone. Drouyn figured out how to make that work, and in my opinion it put pro surfing on the map. If you had to say just one thing, that was it. The man-on-man format. So for me, Michael Peterson and Peter Drouyn were the two most impressive Australians in the mid-seventies, not Ian and PT.

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