Look, Mom, I'm The Champ!

Some say the Masters, which is an important steppingstone to the U.S. team, has stiffer competition than the world meet because even the second-line U.S. skiers are better than the foreigners. Participation in the Callaway Gardens event is by invitation—only Super Masters are allowed—so there are no mere "experts" and "masters" cluttering up the scene. The boss, ex-Congressman Howard (Bo) Callaway, likes it that way.

Bo likes to water ski himself and his daughter Betsy was national junior girls' slalom champion a few years ago. He lives in a stone house atop Pine Mountain and, because he also loves snow skiing, he has just bought himself another mountain, Crested Butte in Colorado. Callaway is fond of his little invitational on Robin Lake, and he uses it to experiment with improving the spectator appeal of water skiing. He has built a nice pavilion at water's edge, with an elevated judges' stand. The Masters is a well-run tourney.

The toughest part about operating a ski tournament is judging each contestant's two 20-second trick runs. It requires unblinking officials who can talk faster than a tobacco auctioneer. They hunch forward, watch the skier intently and, while secretaries write furiously in shorthand, narrate the rapid sequence of stunts. Here, in the lingo of the lakes, is one of Tricky Ricky's 20-second runs, or at least the part of it that got counted, "Wake 540, wake back-to-back, reverse of that trick, back-to-front, wake-line 360, wake 360 [after which he kicked off one ski], wake stepover front-back, stepover back-front, stepover front-back, wake stepover back-front, wake-line 360, reverse of that, toe 360, toe back, toe front."

In English that means that McCormick did at least 15 tricks, first on two skis, then on one, skiing forward and backward, holding on with two hands, one hand and one foot, and turning this way and that over the tow-line, the boat's wake and sometimes both at the same time. "Most of the things I do, I end up backward," he says. "I feel about as at home skiing backward as I do skiing forward."

Every stunt in a kid's repertoire means at least 50 falls learning it. Water-ski parents, every bit as avid as stage mothers but nowhere as nasty, worry most about the jumps. Christy Weir's brother, John, lost five teeth in a jump. Ricky's older brother Jim, his coach and trainer, came off a ramp in Lake of the Ozarks, landed, was caught by a wake from another boat and tore all the ligaments in a knee. Grimditch was knocked out on a jump and was floating face down when he was rescued. From then on his father insisted he wear a helmet. Alan Kemp-ton's mother shuts her eyes and prays when he jumps.

The fears are obviously justified. The skiers swing to the right, wait until the boat goes by and then cut sharply leftward to the ramp. An experienced boat driver has to give it some gas—just enough—to offset the sometimes tremendous pull of the skier, who can slow down a boat as much as eight to 10 mph otherwise. The effect of the last-second cut is like cracking a whip and some of the men hit the ramp at 65 mph. When they land with a splat, they sometimes briefly sit down. Most sit down so hard that they wear "fanny-dunkin' pants," something over their swimsuits to lessen the sting. To accurately measure the jumps, the Masters had jump meters at three different points in the pavilion. The monitors sighted in on the splashes, reported the angles, and then people stationed up in the judging stand, double-checked by a small computer, figured out the distance by trigonometry.

They didn't need the computer to figure out that Liz Allan was going to win women's overall. That was obvious Saturday, when she won both jumping and tricks for the second day in a row. Men's overall, with Suyderhoud leading slalom and jumping and McCormick leading tricks, was still up for grabs. Then, last Sunday in his last chance, Suyderhoud missed the overall title by losing his specialty and failing to clear 150 feet in three jumps.

Ah, that Ricky. The first two days of the meet he wore a red hat with white polka dots. But on Sunday officials asked him to take it off, saying that it didn't look dignified for a member of the U.S. team. Ricky took off the hat, but he didn't like the idea. You know how it is: kids will be kids.