Lisa Andersen
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Florida native Lisa Andersen was the greatest female surfer in the history of the sport. And though her four Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Championship titles were eclipsed by Australians Steph Gilmore and Layne Beachley, and tied by Hawaiian Carissa Moore, Andersen will forever hold the title of competitive trailblazer and bona fide legend.
In the mid-1980s, at the age of 16, Andersen ran away from home and trekked across the country to Huntington Beach, California, where she waited tables and slept on the beach as she worked to build a pro surfing career. She burst into the spotlight in 1986, when she won more than 30 National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA) trophies in less than one year.
Andersen — who made no bones about the fact that she wanted, and could, surf like her male counterparts — learned to leverage her explosive and progressive free surf style, adapting it for the professional circuit and quickly making her mark on the highly competitive ASP World Tour. She won her four World Championship titles in a row between 1994 and 1997.
In 1995, Andersen became the first woman to make the cover of Surfer magazine, which named her that same year one of “The 25 Most Influential Surfers of All Time.” In 2000, Sports Illustrated ranked her number 76 on their list of the “Greatest Sportswomen of the Century.”
Though she no longer regularly competes, Andersen has found success as a coach. In 2007, she led the USA Women’s Team to a Gold Medal at the X Games and was voted the “Best Female Action Sports Athlete” at the Teen Choice Awards. That same year, she was awarded the prestigious “Waterman of the Year” by the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA).
Andersen was also an ambassador for the world-renowned surf wear brand, Roxy. The company launched a line of Lisa Andersen apparel in 2017 and produced a documentary directed by the surf journalist Chas Smith on Andersen’s life and career, called Trouble: The Lisa Andersen Story.
Andersen remains an icon to surfers from all walks of life. She is celebrated as the first female surfer to proudly bring her athleticism to the mainstream, an accomplishment that paved the way for women’s surfing to become the popular sport it is today.
Photos by Tom Dugan, Jeff Hornbaker, Dick “Mez” Meseroll, Bruce Walker, and courtesy Roxy / Quicksilver
