When Surfing Peaked
The 2000’s were the golden era of surfing. It’s never been the same since.
The greatest writer on the planet who surfs is, in my humble opinion, longtime award-winning journalist for The New Yorker, William Finnegan.
Finnegan, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his memoir Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, doesn’t write about surfing often. His stories focus mostly on international affairs, ranging from wars, poverty, racism, trafficking, and politics.
So when Finnegan does write about surfing, I drop everything and immediately find a quiet space to read his brilliant content and prose.
Finnegan’s most infamous surf story (aside from his Pulitzer Prize winning book) is a story he published for The New Yorker in 1992 titled Playing Doc’s Games, a two-part series which focused on the rather esoteric San Francisco surf scene of the 1980’s and, more specifically, his friendship with San Francisco big wave surfer (and complete maniac) Mark “Doc” Renneker. The story was so good that Finnegan essentially republished it as a chapter in Barbarian Days, and any surfer who has taken the actual time to read the story realizes the sheer brilliance of Finnegan’s’ words.
The man knows surfing. And he knows how to tell a surfing story better than anyone else on earth.
So when Finnegan published a new surf story for The New Yorker titled Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave, I immediately cleared room in my schedule so I could sit down and read the article in peace.
The story focuses on Kelly Slater’s artificial wave in the middle of nowhere (Lemoore, California), which has captured the attention of surfers and non-surfers alike because of the pristine perfection of the actual wave itself.
For decades, surfers and engineers have been trying to create the perfect artificial wave. Whether it was Pratte’s Reef, Bournemouth Reef, or the numerous artificial waves around the world built by engineers from companies including NLand Surf Park (FYI: the wave’s garbage), The Cove, Surf Lakes (this is the newest incarnation of artificial waves and has serious potential), and much more, none have seemed to equal the perfection and beauty of Kelly Slater’s artificial wave.
Kelly Slater’s artificial wave captured the attention of Finnegan, who went to Lemoore to cover a World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour event, which was being held there instead of its customary California stop at Lower Trestles.
Yes, you read that correctly: the WSL, which was renamed that from the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP), decided to not hold a major surf contest at a traditional location that is arguably California’s best wave so they could instead hold it in the middle of farm country.
And while I was reading Finnegan’s article, a thought occurred to me:
“When was the last time I actually cared about professional surfing?”
For nearly my entire adult life, I’ve pursued surfing with a passion. I’ve been following competitive surfing since the late 90’s, and as someone who was an actual surf journalist, covering the sport for various publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, the Adventure Sports Network and HuffPost, I fervently kept up on every detail and nuance of the sport.
Something changed though. I don’t think it was old age, since I still keep track of most other sports I grew up loving. Yet here I am, suddenly not following surfing that much and really, ultimately, I’m simply not that interested in it anymore.
And I began to wonder why.
The thought then hit me like a ton of bricks:
Surfing has peaked.
The sport of surfing has capitulated in every regard. It’s no longer interesting. With the exception of maybe John John Florence (Kelly Slater, at 46, is hardly a world title challenger these days), there are no stars in the sport to keep things interesting and relevant.
The maneuvers are the same. The one variable that was added to surfing in the 2010’s were aerials, and this gave surfing a skateboarding-type feel to it that simply didn’t offer anything genuine or authentic to the sport.
Otherwise surfing, with minor exceptions, is exactly the same as it’s ever been. Except there aren’t really any surfers that make things interesting anymore, and the fact that it’s exactly the same has made observing it very boring.
In the 1970’s you had the shortboard revolution, with surfers including Gerry Lopez and Shaun Tomson delighting crowds with turns, hacks and barrels no one had ever previously seen.
In the 1980’s you had the flash and style of Brad Gerlach versus the cool and calm approach of Mike Parsons, bringing a rivalry and competitiveness to the sport that definitely made things interesting. There was a hard, rockstar edge to surfing those days, and it sure as shit made things entertaining.
And the 1990’s introduced the greatest surfer ever, Kelly Slater, who always seemed to find a way to squeak out close victories in the tightest of heats to excite the audience. Slater seems to always have the flair for dramatics in competitive surfing, with a great example being when he edged out Rob Machado in overall points in the 1995 Pipe Masters semifinals (most infamously known for the “high five” Slater gave to Machado which some interpreted as a mind game Slater played to success) to win the ASP World Championship.
Slater really did change the game. His style is still so perfect, his appeal is mainstream (the man was Jimmy Slade in Baywatch and has dated Hollywood actresses and models including the likes of Pamela Anderson in her prime, Gisele Bündchen, Bar Rafaeli, possibly Kirsten Dunst, Cameron Diaz, and a whole lot more) and he was so good at surfing that he became bored and retired after winning a staggering six world titles in the 1990’s.
And the 2000’s (you’re never going to catch me calling this decade “The Oughts”) was when surfing peaked. The sport was at its pinnacle.
And it’s never going to get better.
Andy Irons started the decade as the clear successor to Slater, claiming three consecutive world titles from 2002–2004. It’s very possible that Irons’ dominance is what drove Slater out of retirement, and Slater’s first year back on tour in 2003 was epic since the world title chase between Irons and Slater came down literally to the final wave at Pipeline, with Irons winning the second of his three consecutive world titles. It wasn’t until 2005 that Slater finally overcame his biggest rival to win his first world title (and seventh overall) since coming out of retirement.
Yet it was the final heat of the 2005 Billabong Pro J-Bay that truly captured the action and drama of competitive surfing’s greatest rivalry, and true peak moment.
Slater and Irons were neck and neck in points accrued, and were competing hard that year for the world championship. Irons still had the upper hand in the rivalry, and when the two surfers met in the finals, it was Irons who looked to be in control. This was the first time the two surfers had ever met in a final, and Slater needed a very high score of 9.25 if he was going to win the contest since Irons was in complete command of the heat.
Slater, following his intuition and instincts, paddled away from the main peak and instead followed a pod of dolphins who were having their own fun in the surf that day. With just 15 seconds remaining, Slater followed the dolphins and caught the wave of the event, snapping three hard turns on a long right-hand wave to score a 9.5.
Following Slater’s magical wave at Jeffreys Bay, Irons was overheard yelling at the judges when the scores were announced.
“Is that what you guys do now, just go with the crowd?” said Irons to one of the judges, feeding off of a wild crowd response to Slater’s wave. “You gave him a 9.5 before he even took off. Fucking ridiculous.”
Slater won the event and never looked back, as he resumed his dominance. Slater won his seventh world title that year, and four more after that for a staggering 11 world titles total.
Things between Slater and Irons were heated for a while. This was a true rivalry in every sense of the word.
The two surfers would eventually become close friends, with Slater repeatedly paying tribute to Irons in the years since his tragic passing.
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Surfing’s true decline, in my humble opinion, started in 2011. The ASP clearly needed some sort of revamping and reorganization when they couldn’t even do basic math and awarded Kelly Slater his eleventh and final world title at the Rip Curl Pro Search San Francisco. This despite the fact he didn’t technically win. ASP Tour Manager Renato Hickel miscalculated the totals and what’s even more egregious is that Hickel is still employed by the WSL!
The ASP clearly needed a shakeup. What it didn’t need though was a bunch of corporate non-surfers taking over competitive surfing.
And that was perhaps the most fascinating revelation in Finnegan’s story. While the piece was supposed to focus on the impact of Kelly Slater’s artificial wave, Finnegan delved deep into the history and organizational structure of the WSL and revealed some fascinating insights into its inner workings:
“In 2016, the World Surf League, a privately held company that owns and operates professional surfing, bought a controlling interest in the Kelly Slater Wave Company, including, of course, its pending patents. The price was not disclosed, but Surf Ranch is said to have cost thirty million dollars to develop… the newly formed World Surf League took over from a rickety predecessor that had been run by ex-pro surfers and apparel manufacturers. The W.S.L. group bought pro surfing for nothing except a promise to invest in it. The acquisition was fronted by Slater’s manager, Terry Hardy, and Paul Speaker, a former National Football League executive. Speaker, who does not surf, liked to point out that ninety-seven per cent of N.F.L. fans have never played football.
The new majority owner is Dirk Ziff, a Florida financier who is also a newcomer to surfing. Ziff, fifty-four, is an heir to the Ziff-Davis publishing empire, and helps run a family investment firm. According to Forbes, his net worth is nearly five billion dollars. His wife, Natasha, who was once a reporter for Forbes — that’s how they met — became interested in surfing first, and when Dirk had a look at the W.S.L. he saw an opportunity. One can’t, after all, buy the P.G.A. or the N.B.A. One can buy an N.F.L. team, but not the whole league. The price (zero) looked right. Ziff had to be informally vetted by Kelly Slater. Hardy made the introduction, and the two men hit it off. They both play guitar — Ziff well enough to have played lead on a 1994 Carly Simon single.
The W.S.L.’s grand plan was to expand the fan base, from “the core” — surfers — to sports fans in general. That seemed like a fool’s errand. Surf contests are basically impossible for the uninitiated to watch. The judging is incomprehensible, even to many surfers. The waves, moreover, are rarely excellent, and they arrive on their own schedule — that’s why contests customarily include a ten-day waiting period and still sometimes get skunked. Not ideal for TV. The W.S.L. tried to make the best of these indigenous difficulties with a new motto, “You can’t script this.” That sounded like frustrated marketers attempting to entice dubious consumers to watch.”
Finnegan’s harsh criticism of the WSL continued:
“As if to confirm everyone’s suspicions, Beth Greve, the W.S.L.’s chief commercial officer, was photographed in Bali lugging a beginner’s board across the beach with the fins put in backward. Backward Fins Beth became famous in surf world — more than half a million views on @kook_of_the_day. And then BeachGrit, an Australian Web site that delights in trolling the W.S.L., blew up the image to billboard size and installed it on a freeway in Lemoore, just in time for the Surf Ranch Pro. The billboard shot zoomed around the surfing Internet.
Slater saw it. He is a tireless online poster, with a rare degree of patience. On his Instagram feed, a magnet for cranks of all kinds, he has spent years debating flat-Earthers, laying out innumerable scientific proofs that the planet is round. He’s a well-informed environmentalist; right-wing flamethrowers rain hellfire on him for that, and he often takes the trouble to reply to them individually. When the Backward Fins Beth billboard went viral, Slater showed a tiny bit of pique. On the BeachGrit Instagram feed, he wrote, “Funny. Cheap. Character Revealing.” The BeachGrit crew was ecstatic. They had successfully trolled the king.
Dirk and Natasha Ziff have become ardent fans of the Championship Tour, but it’s not clear that they were prepared for the vehemence of people’s feelings inside the world of surfing. In August, they were honored by a surf-industry association as 2018’s Watermen of the Year. Dirk took the occasion of the awards banquet to lecture his critics. “I wonder if some of you get up every day and stir the milk into your coffee, thinking about what you can write that day that might humiliate the W.S.L.,” he said. “I have a message to the haters, and it is simple. Be tough. Call us out. Keep us honest. Tell us what we need to improve. But don’t pretend you don’t know that, when you go beyond constructive criticism and cynically try to rally negative sentiment toward the W.S.L., when you try to take us down, you are not just going after us. You are going after Kelly Slater. . . . You are undermining the hopes of every kid who lives with salt in their hair, dreaming of being a world champion one day.” If the W.S.L. succeeds, he said, everyone involved with surfing will prosper — “except maybe a few grumpy locals who have to deal with some new faces in the lineup.”
At the banquet, these remarks were presumably met with applause. The Ziffs have been welcomed as deep-pocketed, well-meaning benefactors by most of the surfers on tour, including Slater, who is, after all, one of their business partners. Out in the wide world of surf, however, Ziff’s speech was met with scorn. Online forums and comment threads lit up, rejecting this lecture from a wealthy outsider and, in some quarters, rejecting the very idea of a professionalized sport. On a Surfer magazine thread, an anonymous wit summed up a popular view: “Grumpy locals are what make surfing surfing.””
And this right here is why competitive surfing is now dead to me. Kelly Slater doesn’t compete regularly anymore and, at 46, is probably through competing for world titles. John John Florence, possibly the biggest star on the tour save for Slater, is injury prone, and while Brazilian surfers such as Gabriel Medina and Adriano De Souza are world champions who dominate waves, they simply don’t have the mass appeal that competitive surfing needs for relevancy.
Kelly Slater Wave Company had the potential to rock the industry and perhaps bring some interest back to the sport. The immediate problem with holding major contests at an artificial wave is that it lacks the excitement of surfers waiting for an important wave with seconds to spare. It lacks the natural elements that webcast viewers love gazing at during lulls. It lack the variance of different waves that doesn’t exist in LeMoore. The fact that every wave is the same, and the surfers are essentially pulling the exact same maneuvers on the exact same wave over and over again, is boring as fuck. There’s nothing compelling about it.
I brought up this topic with numerous former pro surfers I’m still friends with. I asked them if they still follow professional surfing. About half said they casually follow it and try to watch webcasts when a major contest is on. The other half said they stopped following it entirely.
Most of them agreed that it simply wasn’t that interesting anymore. It’s true that as you get older, priorities change. Many people start having kids, and that alone takes up most of your day. Careers probably take up the rest of your time. Yet people still used to find a way to follow professional surfing.
At least in the 2000’s they did. When surfing was at the peak of its powers.
