In surfing, there is always a huge amount of controversy over historical stuff dealing with who invented what, or who started what.
There is always somebody who will say so-and-so did it first and come up with a date when it probably could not have happened yet. One of the great debates is “who is responsible for the ‘shortboard’ revolution?”
The year 1966 would be the real beginning to my best years as far as being a competitive professional surfer. I won a ton of events that year, including the men’s division, paddleboard race and Duke Kahanamoku trophy for “Best All Around Surfer” at the United States Surfing Championship. Things were picking up all the way around.
I do want to mention something here though that is noteworthy for the telling of this story. When we were sitting on the beach, waiting for our final heat to go out at the U.S. championships, the six of us finalists were watching the junior division. David Nuuhiwa was in it and probably turned in the best performance of his competitive life. There are many photos documenting him perched on the nose doing a killer “soul arch.” It seemed that all of us, sort of in unison, went, “Wow, glad he is still in the juniors.”
This is important for a number of reasons. David was without a doubt the best noserider of that period. I don’t think anybody would argue that. He had a beautiful smooth style and he would just get up there and stay and stay. At that time in the United States, noseriding was a really big deal and he was the king of the noseriders.
Shortly after the U.S. championships they held the world championship in San Diego. The top surfers from everywhere were coming to compete.
Just before the contest was supposed to start, we started hearing rumors about a guy from Australia, Nat Young, who had been surfing the previous week up north of Santa Barbara. He was reported to be riding some new kind of board and was really looking good.
When…
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