Surf Is Where You Find It (Revised and Expanded)

Photo: Joe Quigg collection

Being the best surfer in the world never had meaning for me. On my own, likely I never would have conceived of such a thought. I set goals to improve my surfing, but apart from a passing fancy, being the best seemed frivolously unrealistic.

There were other surfers who I thought might have deserved to be called that. I also knew that my experience was limited, and there was little likelihood that even the great surfers of my time could be gathered together for a determination. Moreover, all of this says nothing about the ambiguity of any standard of review. Judging surfers is a slippery slope and ultimately subjective. What the heck identifies a good surfer? We surfers think we know. “Don’t fall off the surfboard,” we can say with confidence. None of this, however, precluded me from having surf heroes.

I began to surf in contests where the object was to choose the best surfer. Right away I understood that such anointings were transient. Like bubbles of a breaking wave, those moments passed quickly. The next day, everything would start again from the beginning. Nobody would be “the best” anymore.

I discovered yoga when I was about nineteen years old. It provided me with some answers. I learned that winning at something is nothing when compared to mastering it. I applied this insight to surf contests, and was less disappointed when I didn’t win. By expecting less, I suffered less.

Thus armed with a little yogic understanding as protection for fragile feelings, I walked my career as a surfing persona down some interesting paths. If the measure of surfing was based upon the sum total of competition results, my surfing stunk. I traveled to the world surfing venues, competed in the events, and most often finished at the bottom of the order. My few good finishes were in a contest with just five other guys at a spot where I was the only one who surfed there on a regular basis.

As it turned out, not only did this particular contest grow into a premier event, but overnight the spot became the most photographed wave in the world of surfing. Surf magazines and movies dominated that world.

Photographs and films of me surfing at this place called the Pipeline permeated that period of the commercial surf media. With that, I came to be recognized as a surfing star—what in the 1970s we called a “name.” I thought it was a bunch of hogwash.

I also had a friend who was, I thought, a much better surfer than I was. Every time we saw another picture of me somewhere, he rolled his eyes, sighed disgustedly, and called me a kook. The truth of it was, he was right to a certain extent. But having few or no expectations, I was able to accept the fame or the criticism, and take what came with a sense of humor.

One time on a trip to Australia, I was performing poorly as usual in the pro surfing events there. Nevertheless, because I was known as ‘Mr. Pipeline’ to folks who had never heard of Jock Sutherland or the late Butch Van Artsdalen, I was interviewed by a surf journalist.

We spoke of many things. My view of the world was esoteric to him. Yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophies were not widely known at that time in the surfing world. His pragmatic worldview was based primarily on facts and results. We might have shared a belief in the physics of atoms and molecules forming waves to ride, but our polar opposite perceptions of life could have provided rich fodder for German philosophers. Finally, he asked me who I thought was the best surfer in the world.

With no wetsuit or crowd, Tommy Zahn slides across a slick-looking Rincon wall on a Joe Quigg shape that was ahead of its time. Photo: Joe Quigg collection

I answered that it wasn’t really something that mattered in the grand scheme of things. After all, I suggested, weren’t we all the best that we could be in everything we did or tried to do? No, he wasn’t interested in that. In his view, the best surfer in the world at this point in time was a person who could be named.

I saw where he was headed. The World Champion surfer of the time happened to be an Australian. Australians can be fiercely nationalistic. They love nothing better than to pound their chests when there is something to be proud of, and even sometimes when there isn’t. I could see he wasn’t going to take any other kind of answer.

“OK,” I said, “the best surfer who ever lived was a guy named Tommy Zahn.”

“Oh bloody hell, who is this Tommy Zahn?” asked the exasperated journalist. “I’ve never even heard of him.”

Tom Zahn was a surfer from back in the 1950s who was a great paddler. Paddling was at that time a bigger deal than actual wave riding, at least in part because a paddleboard race was something that had a clearly defined winner. Tom Zahn came to Hawai’i, trained with the great Tom Blake, and went on to beat the indomitable George Downing in the prestigious Diamond Head race. Zahn later went on to become the Chief Lifeguard of the L.A. County beaches. He was also a very good-looking guy with a terrific build.

This journalist was well known for his expertise on the statistics of modern surfing. I would have wagered he could name the top five finishers in every single major surfing event spanning the five years preceding my interview. He was a bit heated on account of having been snagged on something about surfing he didn’t know.

I lost my straight face during the delivery, much as I had gassed those surfing contests Down Under.