Cover Story: Chairman of the Board

by Victor Williams

Kelly Slater had a dream one night to putt left-hand-low, and it stuck. (Steve Sherman)

Winter’s coming, and Kelly Slater is ready to swing.

For him, that means at least two things. Right around Thanksgiving, he’ll set up shop on the north shore of Oahu, wax up his custom-shaped surfboards and keep constant vigil for the next big wave, most of which are born as a tiny swell somewhere near the Aleutian Islands. Pushed inexorably southward by the winds of winter storms, they compress against the ragged Sandwich Isle shoals to reach heights of more than 25 feet. If the water’s right, he’ll head out on jet skis with his crew and join dozens if not hundreds of other surfers in a queue of wet, intense anticipation. And when it’s his turn, he’ll be towed into position as the wave builds to its crest, gauge its size and duration and break point, and head in for the next in a 20-year-and-counting line of wicked, wonderful, here-and-gone rides on nature’s heaving spine.

If the water’s not right, he’ll head for Turtle Bay Resort and tee it up, maybe with his set foursome of fellow surfers, maybe with Aussie PGA star and sometime surfer Adam Scott or multi-Mercedes Championship winner Stuart Appleby, maybe with buddy Fred Couples, maybe just with whomever’s around.

“There are a few guys on Tour who are anytime going to want to go out and play a game,” says the 34-year-old Slater in August as he heads out to a Southern California range for some rare practice before hopping a red-eye to Fiji for a surf-and-golf week with friends. “If I’ve got a game going, they’re coming. In Hawaii, there are a couple of guys who I pretty much play with every day. It depends on the surf. If it’s good, I surf; if it’s not so good, I golf. I went through a period of time when I was so hooked on golf that I surfed in the Pipeline Masters — our Augusta — in the morning, and after my heat I played nine holes, then surfed another heat later on.”

So by any definition, this is a laid-back but risk-taking superstar with a serious golf addiction and the game to back it up. In Hawaii, he’ll gauge the tradewinds and do his best to keep his ballflight low. As any waverunner knows, a low line is always best on the Islands, whether it’s an 8-iron to a tucked pin or a piercing body-tuck against a curling wall of Pacific seawater.

And what if the ball isn’t behaving for Slater, who’s been known to carry a single-digit handicap? His thoughts turn back to the beach. “At Turtle Bay, you’ll see the conditions change quick. The wind will change in an hour two. And if you’re not having a great round, you’ll think, ‘Pipeline’s probably going off. Man, you should be surfin.’ You shouldn’t be golfin’.”

Either way, Slater is in his element. Along with Kirra in Australia — an epic wave off Queensland’s Gold Coast — Hawaii’s Pipe is his favorite place to work on his trademark skate-like maneuvers, in which he loves to grab a lot of air instead of holding a long, fluid line as “old skool” surfers do. He’s renowned for pushing his sport’s boundaries and bringing it to a wider audience, for his excellent conditioning and consummate skill on the water. He won his first world title in 1992 at age 20 and has added six more, including one last year, despite taking several years off in the late ’90s to spend time with his daughter and hone his golf game. And he was in first place about halfway through this year’s pro tour campaign.

With a mantel-ful of trophies in his sport and a giant jones for the links, Slater is known as the Michael Jordan of surfing. Very few fans or fellow pro boarders will argue with his standing as Greatest Surfer Ever, though Laird Hamilton — he of sculpted bod, blond hair, American Express commercials and daredevil attacks on the world’s biggest curls, including Maui’s deadly Jaws — may beg to differ.

Then again, Hamilton can’t wield the sticks the way this guy can. Slater took up the game a decade ago and within a couple of years was shooting in the 70s. “I got down to about a 6. I kept my official handicap at 7 after two or three years,” he says. “I’ve never really practiced; I just go and play golf.” The day before FG tracked him down, he’d fired a 77 at the Valley Club of Montecito in Santa Barbara, where his board shaper, Al Merrick, is a member. “I think I dropped four shots in the first three holes,” he says, which means he lost only one or two shots to par the rest of the way. Not bad for a guy who’s pretty much self-taught, taking his swing cues from watching the best in the business.

“I’m pretty good at mimicking — doing something and stealing it. I can watch Tiger or Ernie play. The other day I watched Tiger for one second on TV, his setup to the ball, and felt like my setup got better. How relaxed his arms look, even though he’s so powerful and fast in his move. He’s in position. Ernie, obviously his tempo is the best there is. You watch that for a while, it’s going to have an effect on you. It’s like listening to music. If you listen to classical or jazz, it’s going to mellow you out and focus you a little bit. If you listen to heavy metal, you’re in a totally different frame of mind. When the greats in any art or sport do what they’re doing, you tend to get the feeling of what they’re doing. That has a big effect on my game.”

Obviously Slater lives life, does his job and plays his games largely by feel — that’s part of what makes him such a wizard on the waves. Only recently has he gone technical when it comes to his golf.

“I went to TaylorMade the other day,” he says. “I’ve got a buddy over there. They put me on their robot machine and gave me a printout of what my swing planes are doing, my swing speeds, face angles, and I learned quite a bit. Now I’m trying to put it all in action. I pretty much hit a straight ball at this point, a little bit of fade in my irons.”

Ballstriking is his thing, always has been, but it took a while for the putting stroke to catch up. “I’ve had rounds where I’m a great putter, like anyone, but I’ve always struggled with my left hand, always pulling the ball. Or maybe my shoulders were a little open. I went to a left-hand-low split grip. I literally woke up dreaming ’bout it one morning, and thought that’s how I should putt. You know how you’re in that kind of dream state when you first wake up? I was thinking about it because I’d had such putting problems. The first day I went out and made four or five birdies and cut out my three-putts. I’ve been putting that way for a year and a half, and I drain a lot of them.”

Slater is so over-the-moon about golf that it’s hard to believe he didn’t take it up as a kid in Cocoa Beach, Fla., where his dad owned a bait and tackle shop. There are probably 200 golf courses within a 50-mile radius, yet Slater was instead drawn to the ocean a short beach walk from his front door. He started seeking out big waves early on — after school, before school, whenever he could — and found solace in the surf while struggling with his folks’ marital problems (they divorced when he was 11) and his dad’s drinking. By his early teens, he was on the national radar among the surf cognoscenti. He started showing up in magazines. He had an agent and signed with Quiksilver, which remains his biggest sponsor. And after he won his first world title in 1992, he spent a year on Baywatch as Jimmy Slade; the show became the most-watched syndicated program in the world and introduced Slater’s hazel-eyed mug to millions of new fans.

Then came a stint singing with a band called (of course) The Surfers, which released an album called Songs From the Pipe and even opened for Pearl Jam — whose own lead singer, Eddie Vedder, would probably still be on the San Diego surf scene had he not become a grunge rock messiah. Not so for Slater. His singing pipes are questionable, his acting chops are a passing fancy and even though he’s got a definite Hollywood vibe about him, complete with tabloid-worthy romances (Pamela Anderson among them), he remains true to his original calling and waves away the idea that he’s even close to being a mainstream star.

“Actually, publically I’m pretty under the radar. A lot of people do recognize me, but it’s nothing like being a movie star where that fanatical, crazy thing is happening. When I first did the Baywatch thing back in ’92, I did get crap from a lot of guys in the magazines, for whatever reason. But I think now, when I can make a call and get my friends onto L.A. Country Club, it doesn’t bother them as much. They deal with it,” he says with a laugh. “But it is a tough thing to deal with. In the surfing fraternity, you want to maintain the soul and tradition of surfing, and there are people who are somewhat protective of it. They don’t want crowded surf and the soul of the sport to get lost in some way. They have a right to feel that way.”

That soul merged with his early on. “I didn’t have to go through that many wipeouts to figure it out. There was probably a part of me, the second I caught a wave, that knew this is what my life was going to be,” he says. “It just took me a while to catch up and realize it. It reminds me of a book I read called Blink, that basically says you pretty much know the answer to anything in the blink of eye, but it takes your mind a while to get around it and figure it out. You have a gut instinct about a person or situation, good or bad, but you don’t trust it for weeks, months or even years until you get some feedback.”

Sometimes it’s still tough to trust it. Surfing is inherently dangerous, and now that he’s in his mid-30s with a daughter, Slater is still searching for the sparks in his style and psyche that will keep him moving forward in the sport without taking his stature for granted. And that leads to bigger risks on the water. Even though the trend toward tow-surfing has made the game somewhat safer, it’s also attracted more amateurs to the big waves, many of whom quickly get out of their depth and make the water more perilous for all — even the Hamiltons of the world, who thrive on searching for higher walls of water to latch onto for a few thrilling seconds. Where does it end?

“Where they feel comfortable,” Slater says. “In the ocean, there are always going to be things that happen that are beyond your control, and you might drown. I had a friend who drowned in two-foot surf, and he was a good surfer. His board hit him and knocked him out. There are more accidents in small surf than large surf. Nobody has drowned in tow surfing yet. A lot of guys have drowned paddling in big waves. There’s much better water safety and equipment in tow surfing. Paddle surfing is more dangerous. “I think it’s incredible that guys are riding the biggest waves that the ocean can throw at them. There’s that inherent danger, and more guys are going to die, but it’s like going to outer space — they’re doing something that no one’s ever done and people never thought could ever be done.”

As for the amateurs clogging up the waters, Slater is characteristically positive and self-effacing. “I don’t know if it’s bad for the sport. The good guys are always going to be good, always know what they’re doing. But there are guys who don’t. Tow surfing is relatively new. There are things to be learned. We’ve all made our rookie mistakes on a jet ski, where you wipe out or lose a ski, and you’re swimming in the ocean — a precarious place to be. Most people who have been tow surfing have gotten in that situation and felt like an idiot.”

That feeling translates well to golf, where even the best can faceplant in the sand when they least expect it. Despite his dominance of the game, Tiger Woods is human. He blows three-footers and sprays tee shots into the next county (whether or not it’s actually out of bounds). Same for Slater. Wipeouts are the double-bogeys of surfing, but they happen. And though golf is played on land (ideally) and his main gig is on the big blue, he feels a certain crossover in the way both sports involve a lot of waiting followed by one split-decision-driven burst of energy after another.

“In golf you have like five minutes to take a shot. In surfing, when a wave comes, it’s up to you to fit into what’s happening. You can’t control the wave and when you’re going to stand up and that sort of thing. In golf you play for four and a half hours, and there’s only action for a little over a minute of that time. In surfing, there’s a similar thing where you have that waiting game in between waves. You might surf an hour and catch five waves or 20 waves, depending on how big or how long the ride is. That’s part of the experience. You might be talking to people, figuring out something about the lineup, feeling how your board paddles or reading the conditions. It’s a constant thing happening between them. You’re always on the lookout for a wave.”

To find the biggest breaks, Slater and his sea brethren follow the seasons. “You surf in either hemisphere during the winter months,” he says. “During our summer, for consistently the biggest surf in the world, you have to go to Western Australia, Chile, Tahiti, Fiji. You know where the storms are heading. In the winter, obviously it’s Hawaii, Northern California, a few spots in Mexico. And there are a few others you wouldn’t expect — Portugal, Spain, up into Ireland. They all have real giant surf, but up north you’ve got to be foolhardy.”

Ireland? How about a run on its green-cliffed west coast followed by a round at Lahinch or Waterville or Old Head? Yeah, that might be in the cards for Slater the golfer, but for now he’s content to ply his favorite avocation on the other West Coast and SoCal in particular, where he lives and works a good part of the year.

“Besides the time of the Nissan Open [February, which always seems soggy], it’s pretty much optimum weather. It’s not that windy, good temperature, and there’s a great selection of courses, just in Los Angeles alone. If you know the right people, you’ve got Riviera, L.A. Country Club, Bel-Air, some of the other lesser known courses like Mountaingate and Hillcrest and Lakeside, and Sherwood as well. That’s a great track. I haven’t played out in the valley in a while, but there’s endless courses out there, and in the Palm Springs area. It’s a golf mecca, like Florida or South Carolina. There’s so many different types of courses to choose from. “I used to play Woodley, a little public course in the valley,” he says. “I’d be playing there one day and Sherwood the next. Then there’s Big Canyon and a lot of other good private courses in Orange County. The other day, I played La Costa one day and The Bridges the next. That’s a couple pretty good days of golf there.”

Just as he does in Hawaii, Slater might find himself on the first tee with Couples or longtime buddy Tommy Armour III, or putting his sport-spanning celebrity to good use by appearing in various charity events, often initiated by fellow surfers. “It’s great to support something your friends are into,” he says. “To be honest, I’d much rather play an individual round than a scramble these days, but sometimes it’s fun to play with my friends and my bosses from work or whatever. There’s quite a few surf charities that run tournaments, with a fundraiser and auctions. They raise some money and do something good for people.”

Such events also further the cause of golf becoming a “cool” thing do to, even for the hippest hang-tenner and vice-versa. “Yeah, surfing is getting a footing in golf. There has been that crossover. Since Tiger’s been in the game, it’s gotten much younger and hipper. Prior to that, people thought golf was a retirement game. That’s totally changed. A lot of surfers get into it and realize, competitively, it helps us to focus. “I read an interview with a friend of mine who’d gotten into golf. He said, ‘When I was younger I thought it was lame, I never thought it would translate to surfing, but when you’re standing over a six-foot putt and need to make it to win a hole or extend a game, that’s like competing head to head against somebody in a surf tournament, and it helps you get that focus.’ For me it helped translate focusing and understanding my technique while I was riding a wave in order to create the most efficient power and strength and timing I could. The two years starting from the year I started golfing were my two best years on tour. I wasn’t surfing a lot, but I was golfing a lot. I felt like golf gave me a mental edge, where I could focus over a period of time. Coming back from a bad hole is a lot like coming from behind in a heat.”

Sounds like a guy who’s looking beyond his prime on the surf circuit to something just as competitive, but without the risk to life and limb. Not that, at 34, he’s anywhere near ready to trade in the Sexwax for spikes. “As a surfer, I’m halfway through my year right now, I’m sitting in first place on the tour. I’d really love to win the title — it would be my eighth,” Slater says. “That would be an amazing feeling. I’ve put myself in a position to make that happen. I want to get more into surfing big waves, get myself into really good shape. I’m into my 30s and I envision surfing the biggest waves I’ve ever surfed.”

And he wants to bring those waves to more people, in more places. “I’ve got this wave pool idea that we’re working on. It will create the perfect wave anywhere in the world. I envision it being somewhat like golf, where you have memberships. Certain ones would be private, maybe semi-private with optimum times for people who live there. Others would be for the general public with a surf pool to go to.”

Whether or not that happens, surfing’s top swinger will continue to negotiate every great track he can finagle a way onto, usually through his well-placed connections. “Couples has hooked me up with quite a few great courses over the last couple of years,” Slater says somewhat wistfully. “He got me onto the Green Monkey in Barbados, and visually it might be the greatest course I’ve ever seen. It’s built in this quarry, an awesome course, tough track, and there’s no one out there.”

Speaking of tough, he has his sights on someday playing with — and maybe against — his two golf heroes. “I’ve met pretty much all the guys except Tiger. He’s busy. I understand that.” Slater paused, perhaps chuckling at the idea of ever nailing down the game’s greatest player for a handshake, much less a round. “I haven’t played with Ernie, but I’ve met him. I was at the Mercedes at Kapalua. We have a mutual friend, John Ashworth, who started Ashworth clothing back in the day. I met him at this dinner, and he came up to ask me for my autograph. I said, ‘This is a bit of role reversal; I think you’ve got this backwards, buddy.’ He said, ‘It’s not for me, it’s for my nanny; she knows who you are and she figured it would be easier if I came up and got it for her.”

Slater didn’t say whether he got Ernie’s autograph in return. Probably not; it doesn’t seem to fit his laid-back, live-by-the-moment personality. Or maybe he’s just waiting until their paths cross again to “get him” in another way. “I’d like to give the Senior Tour a shot,” Slater says. That’s many, many board rides and more than a few drives and putts down the pipeline of life, but Kelly Slater sounds dead serious. He’s ready for the challenge, just as he’s ready for the big, beautiful waves of the warm Hawaiian winter. FG