The Endless Summer Turns Golden

In the Hawaiian language, the word hui (pronounced "hooey") means a club, a company, a society, a corporation, a partnership, or even—to stretch it a little—a conspiracy. Last week Hawaii's surfers were leaning toward the last definition. Once again, as four times before in the eight-year history of the Smirnoff World Pro-Am Surfing championships, the Hawaiians had been beaten by the Australians, but this time with a difference. Although Mark Warren, a 23-year-old Australian, was the nominal champion, the real winner was a surfing hui that calls itself "The Bronzed Aussies."

The hui's chairman of the board (so to speak) is 24-year-old Ian Cairns from Perth, in Australia's farthest west, who won the 1973 Smirnoff on an unusual triple-skegged board and finished second last year. "Warren, Peter Townend and I got together this year," Cairns said after the final at Oahu's Sunset Beach. "You know, to get sponsors, endorsements, travel money, that sort of thing. We got a manager and we're writing articles, doing promotional work and holding clinics in Sydney. We're pooling all our income and we've done nicely so far." Nicely at the 1976 Smirnoff meant $5,000 contributed by Warren and $500 more by Townend, 23, who finished fourth, boosting the conglomerate's earnings from surfing prizes to $15,932.25 for the year to date.

Corporate enterprise is no stranger to most professional sports—but surfing? Are these evanescent and usually unfindable free spirits about to be transformed into button-down businessmen who ask "How much?" rather than "How high?" when told the surf is up? Are there even now 10-percenters creeping among the palms and across the sands of Australia's Gold Coast, Hawaii's north shore and South Africa's beaches on the lookout for a sun-bleached star to sign? Baseball players have been heard to say they would play for nothing (though not recently, perhaps), but in the last 20 years playing for no pay all day every day has been almost a religion for thousands of young men and women who have migrated to the warmer and wavier areas of the world. Now one begins to wonder if the endless summer is about to fade into the fiduciary fall.

Maybe—but if so, the Aussie hui will be seen as a symptom, not a cause, of change. The gradual elevation of surfing into a professional sport rather than an anarchic escape device for athletic dropouts began in 1969 when Smirnoff held the first "big money" surfing contest at Santa Cruz, Calif. Big money then was $4,100. Dispirited but undaunted by a final decided on two-foot waves, the sponsor decided to move its contest to Hawaii the following year, and ever since the event has been a jewel waiting for a crown to adorn.

Now, thanks in large part to the efforts of Fred Hemmings, the meet director and a former world amateur surfing champion, the crown is taking shape. At the kickoff party at the Kuilima Hyatt Resort Hotel the Saturday night before this year's "wait for good surf watch began, Hemmings announced formation of the International Professional Surfers, a dues-paying organization that has organized the "Grand Prix," consisting of 14 official tournaments in 1977 offering $146,100 in prize money. Randy Rarick, newly fledged as IPS administrative director after a two-year tour of tournament sites, explained the point and money earnings rating system that will establish a world champion; and a representative of Beachcomber Bill's, a California sandal maker that sponsored the party, promised the Grand Prix' top pointmaker $1,500 and an around-the-world airplane ticket. Every surfer present signed up.

The ticket is no small inducement. Though Hemmings and Rarick claim to have modeled their surfing circuit on the PGA golf tour, it is in truth a circuit of the whole world, and a surfer who taps out in Coca-Cola's $25,000 tournament in Sydney next May can't just hitchhike 3,000 miles across Australia and then swim the Indian Ocean to make the next event, South Africa's Gunston 500. The tournament routing is coordinated to eliminate backtracking, but the mileage is staggering: first New Zealand, then four Australian tournaments, next two in South Africa, then Brazil, next Florida and finally five contests in Hawaii.

Thoughts of these distances, combined with a little night music provided by the Pacific outside the hotel, kept the new IPS members from succumbing to total exuberance. No one can ride a 30-to 40-foot wave and that was the kind that was hitting the ramparts of the Kuilima during the founding session. A North Pacific storm had sent down a monstrous swell. "For the first time I can remember," said Hemmings, "I was worried that we'd have too much surf to start the contest." The worry proved unfounded; on Monday morning the pros encountered articulated, well-spaced 10-to 12-foot sets at Sunset.

Smirnoff representatives had wondered privately if all the talk of Australia's two $25,000 tournaments, a third worth $19,000 and the $14,000 Gunston in South Africa might diminish the appreciation of their $12,100 event. But actually, the Smirnoffs top money of $5,000 equals that of the proposed events, and winning it was seen as a leg up for any surfer contemplating the new tour. If anything, the contestants who showed up Monday morning were even more motivated than in the past.

There were absentees. Shaun Thomson, a highly regarded South African, was kept home by exams. Florida's Mike Kataif was also missing, which allowed Hawaii's Eddie Aikau, miffed at being left off the list of invited surfers, to move into one of the preliminary heats.

Despite the short notice, some 3,000 people thronged Sunset's grungy overlook Monday morning—most of them ardent supporters of the Hawaiian contestants. It was not to be one of their happiest days. By the time the eight six-man heats had been run off, it was clear that the Australians had landed in force. Two men from each heat qualified for the three-heat semifinals, and nine of the qualifiers were Aussies, among them all three members of the then-undisclosed hui. Six Hawaiians and one South African—Jonathan Paarman—also survived the preliminaries. Before the day ended, Hemmings decided to go ahead with the single-heat women's championship. Jericho Poppler of Long Beach made the waves come tumbling down exactly as she wished to win the $1,000 prize.