Phil Edwards

Dana Point, California, 1964

Sometimes I feel like a two-bit version of Mickey Dora.

This interview ran in the July 1964 issue of SURFER, just after Edwards won the debut SURFER Poll Awards. 

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How did you start surfing?

When I was eight years old I used to watch Burrhead and Hammerhead surfing in Long Beach. I watched them from a breakwater where I fished with my mother. I used to tell her that this was what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had a paddleboard that I used around Alamitos Bay. When I moved to Oceanside in 1946, I began surfing on that same paddleboard. ...