eastcoastsurf

42 Years Ago

After the 1982 Op Pro, the first pro contest to be sanctioned in California since the IPS World Tour’s inception in 1976, Australian and former Bronzed Aussie Ian Cairns talked all the pro surfers who were on the IPS Tour to jump ship to Cairns’ fledgling Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Pro Tour, which was to launch in 1983 with promises of better prize money and more events. Thanks to Cairns and his Sports and Media Services agency, the U.S. clothing giant, Op, had come onboard as the sponsor of the ‘82 event.

Cairns had brought in Gary Linden, an experienced pro judge and surfboard sponsor of Op team rider David Barr.  Op’s marketing group wanted the ’82 event to be held at Trestles, south of San Clemente, CA, but Linden convinced them to hold it at Huntington Pier noting that getting 50 thousand sets of eyes on the event was more important than the quality surf at Trestles. That first Op Pro in Huntington Beach was won by Australian Cheyne Horan and Hawai’ian Becky Benson.

Cairns launched the ASP World Tour with funding from Op, and he took the pro surfing tour to places it had never been before. If you were willing to sponsor an event the ‘traveling circus,’ as many called it, would come to your town. Non-traditional surf towns in Japan and England  held events and it was under this structure that Atlantic City, New Jersey threw its hat into the ring to host an event.

Op joined as a sponsor, wanting to have a greater East Coast presence.  1976 IPS World Champ Peter “PT” Townend, Cairns’ partner in Sports and Media Services, was hired to run it. On the surface Atlantic City seemed like a unique partner for the World Tour as the city was looking for events to promote the casino-centric town.  The fact that there could be contestable waves on the beaches that were first surfed by Duke Kahanamoku in 1912 might be a good fit, the city’s leaders thought. Little would the surfing world know that bringing the ASP World Tour to Atlantic City would create unforeseen issues and the quality of the waves in New Jersey would not be the problem.

In July, Townend, who took on the role of Contest Director along with Kathy Huber, Promotions Director for Op (known also as Ocean Pacific) took a promotional tour of Atlantic City meeting with organizers.  Townend also got in a few surfs stating, “I’ve been here for a week and have surfed every day.” Townend was familiar with the Atlantic City area as one of his friends was David Scibal, who he had met in Hawai’i in the 70s and the two had remained close. Scibal, (now an Inductee in New Jersey Surfing Hall of Fame, NJSHOF, and an East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame, ECSHOF, Board Member) was a highly respected surfer in 1982 and a savvy local businessman who Townend came to for help when things went a bit south with the event.

Atlantic City’s Promotion Director, Burt Lancaster (more on him later), had promised Townend and Huber forty hotel rooms for traveling pros and event staff, which Lancaster did not deliver on as people began to arrive.   Scibal called in favors from several casino executives to get the rooms.

Prize money for the event, as noted in the Atlantic City Press was $5,000 for first-place in the Men’s Division and $2,000 for first place in the Women’s Division. Sponsors of the event, according to The Press, besides Op and the city, included Harrah’s Casino and Hawaiian Tropic, along with New Jersey surf shops Grog’s Surf Palace in Seaside Heights and Heritage in Sea Isle.

The local newspaper quoted Townend saying, “The Mayor of Atlantic City, Mike Matthews, had been very supportive of the event and he felt it was because he had two sons who were talented surfers in their own right.” Tom and Bob Matthews were local A.C. surfers whose home break at States Ave would be where the contest was to be held. Tom, who today is Legal Counsel for the ECSHOF and a NJSHOF Inductee, recalled his father asking how the event would be run. The elder Matthews was in on a group meeting with folks in the Mayor’s office and contest organizers. Tom, however, missed the event as he was competing at the NSSA Nationals in California, after which he was invited to join the NSSA National Team, coincidentally coached  by Cairns and Townend.

Judges for pro contests during this era were normally highly regarded surfers who were major players in the surf world. Two individuals who made the trek to Atlantic City were Rusty Preisendorfer, shaper with Canyon Surfboards at the time and eventually his own brand, Rusty, and Gary Linden, whose hand shaped boards filled the racks at George Gerlach’s Surfers Supplies retail store nearby in Ocean City. I recently asked Linden why he thought his boards were so popular on the East Coast and he gave much of the credit to Gerlach (ECSHOF Inductee) and his knowledge of what designs would work well on New Jersey’s waves. Linden told me, “I listened to George on board design and those shapes were exclusive to George and his customers at Surfers Supplies.” (As a long-time rider of Linden’s boards, I can confirm they worked well in the N.J. waves.) Frankly, imagining Rusty and Gary initially sharing a room in crappy motel until they, head judges mind you, were moved to one of the Casino properties makes me laugh!

Opening day of the contest saw small waves with two days of the Trials commencing with the top sixteen finishers in the Trials joining the “Top 16” ASP seeded surfers in the main event. Local pros Scotty Duerr (NJSHOF Inductee) from Manasquan and Brian Heritage (NJSHOF Inductee) from Sea Isle both entered the event to test their skills against the best surfers in the world. Duerr nearly advanced but an interference call pushed him to second place in his opening man-on-man heat.  Duerr had drawn a tough heat against Op and Linden team rider David Barr. Heritage lost to Aussie goofyfoot Glen Rawlings.

The women pros, as usual, were getting the short end of the stick with below average surf for their heats and less prize money than the men. However, the contest announced the arrival of the new guard of pro women who would raise the performance levels to new heights. The leaders of the original women’s pro tour – stars like Hawai’ian Rell Sunn and 1982 World Champion Debbie Beecham – were still in the mix, but the two finalists and future World Champions Kim Mearig and Frieda Zamba showed a bright future for the Women’s Professional Tour. As a side note, many at the contest were wondering the whereabouts of  local pro Linda Davoli (ECSHOF Inductee) as States Ave was her local break so everyone expected she would have done well. Linda had a great excuse for not competing as she was getting ready to deliver her daughter, who would be born just a few days after the contest concluded.

While the contest was running smoothly under the direction of Competition Director Townend, he was welcomed by a representative of the local Atlantic City underworld.  A diminutive man in a suit pulled up on the boardwalk behind the event scaffolding in a black Cadillac, asking who was running the show and if someone could find him. Townend, not really understanding who he was speaking with, walked over with his normal jovial personality and asked what he could do for the well-dressed gentleman. Imagine Townend’s surprise when his new friend asked, “Where is my money?”  The mobster had suggested that if he did not get some payment, he would have the permits pulled for the event.

Townend thinking fast on his feet and fortunately having Op’s attorney, Brooks Gifford, in the stands, summoned Gifford to the boardwalk meeting. Gifford, an imposing six foot-plus gentleman proceeded to converse with the shake downer, explaining that Op had the proper permit for the boardwalk and the beach, approved by the Mayor’s office.  Townend showed the permit and Gifford held it in front of the mobster and said, “We have permission to be here so get off the boardwalk or I’ll sue your ass all the way down it.” The mobster left the scene. (To this day PT tells this story with his usual Aussie wit and if you ever get in his presence, please ask him about his Atlantic City mobster experience.)

After two days of lackluster waves the surf gods shined down on the contestants and provided a cold front that cruised through the area on Friday of the main event. Though it had been stormy in the morning, the wind switched offshore and States Ave turned on with 4 to 6 foot peaks. The surf break had two distinct waves – a hollow left hander that peeled off the groin in the middle of the beach and a rippable right that bounced off the nearby Steel Pier and roped down the beach allowing for multiple turns and cutbacks.

Early standouts in the opening rounds were the usual pro tour suspects – Tom Carroll, Shaun Tomson, Michael Ho and Martin Potter – who were all surfing at a high level. Surprising Huntington Beach local Bud Llamas also show his goofy foot skills on the barreling lefts, while local crowd favorite Wes Laine (ECSHOF Inductee) from Virginia Beach showed his backhand that had been fine-tuned on the Outer Banks, NC lefts transferred well onto the Atlantic City waves. The quarterfinals found the addition of Aussies Greg Day and Rabbit Bartholomew but ultimately Llamas and Laine battled their way into the final. The waves remained contestable and Laine prevailed, noting his experience in the smaller Right Coast waves might have been to his advantage. On the women’s side, two tour newcomers – Kim Mearig and Frieda Zamba (ECSHOF) – battled with Floridian Zamba pulling it out in the end.

Basking in the glow of a successfully completed event, Townend was quoted as saying how well the contest was run and he hoped that they would be able to make this an annual event on the ASP World Tour.  Behind the scenes a lot more unfolded just days before and after the scheduled event that would cause some issues for all involved, and the promised hotel rooms were just the beginning.

Following the event an investigation was ordered by Mayor Matthews into what went on with the new A.C. Promotions Director, Bert Lancaster, and his handling of the Ocean-Fest. Apparently, Lancaster had made a commitment of $20,000 from the city’s coffers that he never received approval for. Matthews engaged a special prosecutor to see if Lancaster had been criminally negligent.  In addition, he suspended Lancaster during the inquiry. After an expedited process they found that Lancaster had made commitments that he did not have the power to provide.  Though he was not criminally accountable, he could be civilly responsible, yet in the end nothing ever came of Lancaster’s negligence.

Long story short, the hope that there would be an annual ASP World Tour event in Atlantic City was dashed by the incompetence of a few government officials in the city, something those of us locals were all too familiar.  Sadly, years later, with pro surfing now under the banner of the World Surf League, WSL, a pro longboard event was planned for the same beach as the original Op event and once again the city mismanaged the planning and that contest was cancelled.

Seems the only time Atlantic City’s foray into surfing was ever run properly was when the mobsters oversaw it in the 1920s, which was when Hawai’ians surfed the beaches every summer and played Hawai’ian music in the clubs and on the piers every night.