Never mind the surfing for the moment鈥攋ust take in his physical presence. At 21, Kelly Slater looked as if he鈥檇 been cloned from a bead of Elvis Presley鈥檚 Jailhouse Rock sweat. Today, at 46, he can out-handsome Jason Statham. At 70, he will be three-quarters Paul Newman and (sun damage taking its bitter toll) one-quarter Iggy Pop.听

We looked at Slater a lot in 2017, as he says it will be his听. And as we looked, we pondered many Slater-related stats and metrics, ranging from the wondrous to the surreal, beginning with his 11 world titles spread across a 29-year run as a professional. Then there are his 55 World Tour wins, seven Pipeline Masters victories, and 19 Surfer Poll Awards. The list goes on. Break Slater鈥檚 career into two pieces, right around the year 2000, and he鈥檇 be both the first and second winningest surfer on the tour. Or try this. When 颅Slater made his pro debut in 1990, current world champ John John Florence was negative two years old. Florence today gets the kind of rave reviews Slater did in his unbeatable prime. Still,听颅Slater holds an eight to five advantage in head-to-head matches against his young rival. In August 2016, when the two met in a final, in coral-颅grinding barrels at Tea颅hupoo, Tahiti, Slater did everything but take Florence over his knee for a fatherly spanking on the way to an easy win.

Meanwhile, with the听听and its听machine-made, pool-spawned, endlessly replicable perfect surf, Slater has performed the wave rider鈥檚 equivalent of solving cold fusion while simultaneously driving the sport into its first existential crisis. The rarity of good waves, and the eternal chess game a surfer must play to be in the right place at the right time to catch them, has 颅always defined surfing, shaped it, given it character. The pursuit is 98 percent longing, 2 per颅cent fulfillment. To surf is to suffer. Thus, on December 18, 2015, when Slater dropped a surprise video debut of his freakishly perfect wave, located in the manure-scented flats of Lemoore, California, the surf world froze on its axis. Wave scarcity is over. Or it will be at some now visible point in the future.听

. Watch it again. There鈥檚 Slater at daybreak, looking like a million bucks in a winter jacket and wool cap, breathing steam, standing at the foot of his pool, waiting to get a look at his machine operating at full strength. The wave comes, but we don鈥檛 see it. The camera stays tight on 颅Slater as his eyes go wide, his mouth breaks into a huge, shocked grin, and he lifts his arms, saying 鈥淥h, my God!鈥� It鈥檚 a joyous moment. And maybe a little chilling. Slater jumps up and down and starts laughing the laugh of a man who has changed his sport forever.

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Not only was the and trademarks in the early 鈥�60s, he worked for free. Not because he was young and exploitable, but because he desperately needed to fill ad space for The Surfer鈥攖he rough little 36-page booklet that started off as a promo piece for his , and was later grandfathered in as the debut issue of .

Looking back, the creation of the surf-mag trade in the 1960s seems not so much dramatic as inevitable; it filled an obvious and growing void. There was some risk involved鈥攖he morbidity rate for magazine startups has always been high. But nothing to compare with, say, dumping every penny of your life savings into an experimental polyurethane surfboard blank foam-blowing mold. Full-house crowds at surf movie screenings up and down the coast had already proven the demand for surf-related entertainment. The small but growing number of mainland commercial boardmakers鈥攁lmost all of them conveniently located within a half-day鈥檚 drive on Highway 101, from San Diego to Santa Barbara鈥攃ould hopefully provide a magazine-supporting ad-revenue base. Besides, Americans had already shown they were ready to support their favorite niche sports magazines: and magazines had been around for years.

Finally, in a small but tantalizing development, 33-year-old New York regular-footer John Hammond had just begun to sell his own line of surfboards, and was planning the East Coast鈥檚 first multi-state surf competition. The big, explosive years of the surf boom were still to come. But by late 1959, John Severson, crouched over a grid of magazine artboards laid across the floor of his Dana Point apartment, must have recognized that the auguries for launching a surf magazine were all coming up favorable.

Severson, without question, was the right man for the job. He鈥檇 been surfing for nearly half of his 25 years, and was among the best all-arounders in the sport. Furthermore, he鈥檇 been documenting his experience since the beginning, first with his , then with cartoons, woodblock prints, and paintings. He also played trumpet, formed a barbershop quartet, and pitched for his high school baseball team. As fanatic a wave-rider as ever came down the pike, Severson, unlike most of his peers, didn鈥檛 let the sport crab the rest of his life.

People gravitated toward Severson; he was good-looking and bright, smiled a lot, and had a sense of humor. Art and teaching, he hoped, would together provide a career, and in the mid-鈥�50s he received a Masters in Art Education from Long Beach State. . His surfers were elongated, wavy-limbed, and often featureless, and their boards looked like bent daggers. Sometimes the ocean and sky were faithfully rendered in the usual surf-world blues, greens, and whites, but just as often Severson filled the spaces in shifting fields of coral, lemon yellow, or lavender. 鈥淪eal Beach Locals,鈥� his 1956 semi-abstract oil鈥攊n which three surfers watch another surfer bomb down a jagged wave, under a bruised red-orange Cezanne sky鈥攊s sometimes identified as surf culture鈥檚 original work of art.

Severson taught for one semester, then was drafted into the army. Arriving at Hawaii鈥檚 Schofield Barracks in 1957, he worked as a military draftsman, hawked three-dollar surf-scene ink drawings to Waikiki tourists on weekends, and most afternoons鈥攁s the ranking member of the newly-formed 鈥攚as given permission to surf. After sending home for his Keystone 16mm movie camera, Severson began filming the local surf action. In the winter of 1958 he edited the Hawaiian footage together with some older rolls shot in California, added some hand-lettered titles, and called the resulting film . The movie cleared just enough money for Severson to buy a new , and he immediately began working on a follow-up movie: came out in 1959, not long after Severson completed his army tour and returned to the mainland. By that time, surf moviemaking could almost be described as a career choice. Bud Browne, the genre鈥檚 deacon-faced veteran, had made a handful of films since 1953; by the late 1950s, he had been joined by Greg Noll, Bruce Brown, and Severson.

As Severson barnstormed Surf Safari along the Southern California coast, he laid out stacks of 8脳10 鈥渇rame grab鈥� glossy photos on the ticket table, priced them a buck each, and was amazed at how many sold. Browne and the rest were also flogging 8脳10 action shots from their own movies, though, so nobody had a marketing advantage there. Same with the handbills. Severson鈥檚 illustrated two-color notices were lively single-panel cartoon surf-dramas, but they had to share space on lightpoles and store windows with handbills posted by other filmmakers. (All were stolen nearly as fast as they were posted; further evidence of the surfer鈥檚 unsatisfied appetite for media.)

Thinking ahead to his next movie, Severson hit upon the idea of a promo booklet. He figured it would be a better value for the customer than 8脳10 photos, and it could give Surf Fever a PR edge over the competition. Publishing wasn鈥檛 a total mystery to Severson鈥攖en years earlier he鈥檇 written for the school paper and been on the yearbook committee. Returning to Hawaii for the winter of 1959-60, he brought a 35mm still camera, as well as his Bolex; on the beach that season, he often set both up, side-by-side, and alternated between them.

Surf Fever came together easily in the winter and early spring of 1960. The booklet was harder. Severson was still thinking of it in terms of a promo item, but as he penciled out a table of contents and started messing with photo arrangements, it began to take on a life of its own. He chose The Surfer as the title from a list of dozens jotted down in a long vertical column in one of his sketchbooks, because the booklet itself was 鈥渕eant to be a surfer . . . on its own ride.鈥�

The Surfer wound up looking like a scruffy but earnest art school project, beginning with its horizontal format, grainy cover shot, and hand-lettered logotype. Doodled surf figures glide around the margins. Captions are often set vertically. Lots of real estate on any give page is left unprinted and white. Severson had always liked Doc Ball鈥檚 1946 book , and he鈥檇 intended to make The Surfer a similar all-photo project. It almost came out that way. Most of the features are nothing more than photo groupings with explanatory titles鈥斺�淭oes on Nose,鈥� 鈥淩incon,鈥� 鈥淲aimea Bay鈥濃�攁nd brief captions. No competition reports. No editorials, travel stories, interviews, or equipment features. Severson did add a short fiction piece and a 鈥淪urfing for Beginners鈥� article, and the text columns in these two features add just enough ballast to keep The Surfer from floating away. Surf Fever, ostensibly the whole point of The Surfer, has no presence at all except as a back-cover ad鈥攁nd even there it鈥檚 shoved over to make room for one last Severson drawing.

In terms of design, the magazine looks pretty raw, even by that day鈥檚 standard. Opposing pages often don鈥檛 fit together. In a Southern California surf break map, it isn鈥檛 entirely clear which part is land and which is ocean. Half the photos are blurry鈥攁 hard thing to overlook, especially since most of the Ball images from California Surfriders, published fifteen years earlier, are razor sharp. But like the surf films themselves, none of this really mattered. The Surfer was friendly, authentic, and handcrafted. Anything more sophisticated would have been out of synch with what was happening on the beaches, in the surf shops, and at the high school auditoriums where Surf Fever was playing. The sport was still barely commercialized. Severson managed to sell twelve ads for his booklet, to Hobie and Velzy and the rest, but only because he agreed to do much of the ad designing at no extra charge.

Finally, Severson brought the project to a close on an unexpectedly graceful note. A photograph on the next-to-last page shows a lone surfer paddling out toward an empty wave, with the breaking crest throwing up a helix of spray. Two lines of Severson-composed type are set in the lower righthand corner: 鈥淚n this crowded world the surfer can still seek and find the perfect day, the perfect wave, and be alone with the surf and his thoughts.鈥�

The Surfer went to press just before Easter in 1960. Still not quite sure if he鈥檇 created a magazine, a promo piece, or a book鈥攖he cover was initially going to be hardbound, but a cardboard stock was switched in at the last minute鈥擲everson in the end ran a contents page subtitle describing The Surfer as his 鈥淔irst Annual Surf Photo Book.鈥� His idea was that he鈥檇 follow up with a second edition in 1961 to go with next year鈥檚 surf film.

Severson printed ten thousand copies of The Surfer at a total cost of $3,000; the per-unit wholesale cost was $1.00, and each issue retailed for $2.00鈥攑ricey for something not too far removed from a vanity project. Severson and his brother loaded the magazines from the printer鈥檚 dock into John鈥檚 VW van and immediately began hand-delivering them to bookstores and surf shops鈥攚here copies were snapped up like kibble by gremmies who鈥檇 somehow gotten the early word and were actually lined up and waiting.

Sales peaked early, though. Five-thousand copies were circulating by the end of September. Another five thousand were boxed up and gathering dust in Severson鈥檚 garage. Profit from the enterprise was small, but it was enough to convince Severson to scrap the idea of a follow-up annual and to instead publish a quarterly magazine.

It should be noted that Surfer鈥檚 claim to being the original surf periodical is technically untrue. Three issues of Orange County-based , and four issues of a monthly broadsheet called , were published in 1960 before Severson decided to parlay The Surfer into a magazine. Way back there, we find The Surf: A Journal of Sport and Pastime, a one-penny Australian tabloid published in 1917 and 1918 and dedicated to 鈥渢he surfer . . . a gay-hearted, carefree child of Nature.鈥�

Severson had been in full bohemian mode while producing The Surfer; with The Surfer Quarterly鈥攍ater renamed Surfer鈥攖he goal was commercial success. He changed the format from horizontal to vertical鈥�The Surfer had disappeared on magazine racks behind taller publications鈥攄esigned a new machine-set logotype, and expanded editorial content to include a standard mix of articles, columns, photo features, letters, editorials, and competition coverage. He hired staff. He created discount subscription offers and mailed rate cards to potential advertisers. The new cover price was 75垄鈥攕till pretty steep, considering cost just 20垄. Severson printed five thousand copies of the debut issue of The Surfer Quarterly, and the entire run was gone before the next issue hit the stands. Severson was in the black, and his magazine, by year鈥檚 end, was a surf institution in the making.

When the arrived, Severson was the primary media gatekeeper between trade interests and surfers at large, and he went a long way toward making the transition less crass, if not less abrupt. Not that he was a beacon of purity. Severson in fact was a nimble, tactical, and occasionally fierce businessman. No action was required on his part to eliminate and 鈥攁 pair of clumsy rivals destined to fail鈥攂ut a Santa Monica-published monthly called Surf Guide, which debuted in 1963, brought out the iron fist. Surf Guide was handsome and forward-thinking. It was 鈥渢he most interesting of all the other magazines,鈥� Severson recalled. 鈥淩eally strong.鈥� Enough so that when Surf Guide editor Bill Cleary ran a satire piece in late 1964 poking gentle fun of Surfer and its charismatic owner-publisher, Severson hit back with a million-dollar libel suit. Surf Guide folded two months later. Severson, with the keenest eye for talent in the business, immediately hired Cleary as his new associate editor.

But work never consumed Severson, or at least not in the early going. He kept up as an artist: the cartoon figures that livened up the first issue of The Surfer were deployed for another two years, and his surf movie posters were museum-grade models of composition. 鈥淪urf Bebop,鈥� a semi-abstract painting of two surfers lounging on the beach鈥擲everson鈥檚 finest work as a painter鈥攚as used as a Surfer cover and honored by as one of the best cover illustrations of 1963.

It was an impressive balancing act. There were checks to deposit, meetings to chair, advertisers to court, and Severson did all that. There were also waves to discover and ride, and a drive to present the whole experience to his audience not only through journalism but art. Severson did that, too. Yes, he wanted readers to go out and buy the products advertised on the magazine鈥檚 pages. He also wanted to remind them, in each issue, that what they were doing was beautiful and unique, that it was still a privilege and a calling for the surfer to seek and find the perfect day, the perfect wave, and be alone with the surf and his thoughts.

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It was just last month听when听Brock Little 听that he鈥檇 been diagnosed with liver cancer, and not long after when that the first round of chemo didn鈥檛 work and he wasn鈥檛 going to put himself though another round. That meant the 48-year-old听big-wave surfer听had weeks left, not years. The speed of the whole thing听was shocking. What wasn鈥檛 shocking to anybody who knew Brock was how he handled himself during this time.

Brock grew up the son of two teachers in Honolulu, and went at life with humor. He always used humor. I met Brock in 1985, when he was 18 years old, beardless, and the new hot young gun at Waimea Bay. He started surfing at age seven at Waikiki. At Waimea, Brock was charging the world鈥檚 biggest waves elbow to elbow with bunch of crinkly-eyed salts who鈥檇 been at it for more years than he鈥檇 been alive. They took themselves seriously, the old Waimea crew鈥攖hought of themselves as fighter pilots, gladiators, polar explorers, take your pick. Brock thought that was hilarious.

鈥淵ou know why I surf big waves?鈥� he told me years later. 鈥淭he big secret? Because it鈥檚 fuckin鈥� fun! It鈥檚 the funnest thing ever!鈥�

People loved this about Brock鈥攖hat he laughed at听the sport, danced all over surfing鈥檚 spiritual manifest, and egotistical听pieties. It was never meant to be cruel鈥攎ore like making fun of your best friends. As fond as he was for calling out surf industry bullshit, he was even fonder of being part of it all.

Better still, Brock鈥檚 favorite thing to laugh at was himself. By 1990, he’d laid听the cornerstone of his career at Waimea. Of听particular note was his performance at the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau big-wave contest at Waimea that year, where he attempted to ride what a lot of people at the time were calling the biggest wave ever caught. He cartwheeled halfway down the face, came up, sputtered a bit, and paddled out to try again.

That same year, I interviewed听Brock for a . At that point, he was pulling down a low-six-figure income from sponsors. Did he ever wonder,听I听asked, about how strange his career looked to outsiders? 鈥淥h yeah. It鈥檚 comedy, what I do,鈥� Brock replied. 鈥淧eople ask me what I do for a living, and I do nothing. I pick up a check in the mail and go surfing. And whey the waves aren鈥檛 good in Hawaii, somebody pays me to surf somewhere else.鈥�

A photo posted by Brock Little (@brock.little) on Mar 12, 2015 at 1:44am PDT

Brock, in his younger days, was a semi-regular street fighter, and drove insanely fast, and would jump off pretty much anything鈥攂ridges, cliffs, what have you. He had two or three close calls in big surf. And, for a while after his听divorce several years ago, he drank too much. So when he told me, not long after making the cancer announcement, that he should have died ten or 12 times already, and that he was glad to have made it this far, it was just another instance of him laying down the no-bullshit card.

Brock would have loved more time. He was adamant that, despite all the radical situations he put himself into, he did not have a death wish. He鈥檇 also, of late, leveled out, slowed down, quit drinking, and backed off of huge waves. He was focused on stunt coordinating for Hollywood films (he鈥檇 done work for the films Ocean’s 11 and Pearl Harbor, and the TV show “Baywatch”). Given a choice, he鈥檇 have laughed his way through another five decades. But he wasn鈥檛 given a choice, and he accepted that with astonishing grace.

Last Friday Brock and some friends watched the live feed for the Titans of Mavericks surf contest. Santa Cruz, California, surfer Nic Lamb won, and mentioned Brock during his post-final interview. Not long after that, Brock dropped a comment on one of Lamb鈥檚 Instagram posts: 鈥淐ongratulations @nic_lamb for winning Mavericks. Made me cry. I don鈥檛 cry all that often, but when I do it feels really good. Thank you Nic for making me feel good.鈥�

All those years, Brock made it cool to laugh at surfing. Now here he was making it cool to cry. He died on Thursday, at home in Haleiwa, Hawaii, surrounded by relatives.

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, this month鈥檚 20th Century Fox surf drama based on the story of a sweet, doomed big-wave rider named Jay Moriarity, will enter theaters without a ripple of acclaim and kick out a few weeks later with minus-tide earnings.

That鈥檚 one old surf-geezer鈥檚 prediction, anyway.

Hollywood can鈥檛 do surfing. For 50-something years now, beginning with , Tinseltown has muffed it. Overcooked drama. Undercooked characters. Expensive action shots (which, yes, look great on a big screen) stapled to cut-rate scripts. , , , 鈥攅ach one is, at best, a damp approximation of a surfing life.

The problem is, surfing has no hook. You do it鈥攁 lot, obsessively even鈥攁nd in terms of story arc that鈥檚 pretty much it. The whole point is to continue. You rode a huge wave? You won the big contest? Great, a week later you鈥檙e out there like the rest of us trying to scrape together rides, and the week after that, and the next year, ad infinitum.

Hunger drives surfers. The sport has its romantic and exciting moments, but mostly it鈥檚 just base, simple. Hard to get an elevator pitch from that. Making a great movie about surfing should be easier than making a movie about digestion鈥攏ot by much, though.

Chasing Mavericks won鈥檛 move Hollywood any closer to the mark. I didn鈥檛 even have to watch the trailer to figure that out. I just listened to it. The ominous single-wallop bass drum, the cymbal crash, the Top Gun wailing guitar riff.

It鈥檚 the sound of 20th Century Fox trying to frog-march me to an off-the-shelf, PG-rated climax.

Anybody remember ? The animated one with the cute surfing penguins? No joke, that was the one time Hollywood got it right. Don鈥檛 take the sport so seriously, in other words. More penguins, less drama.

Matt Warshaw is the author of .

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GREG LONG SAT IN FRONT of his dinged-up MacBook on New Year鈥檚 Day 2008, toggling back and forth among a half-dozen wave- and weather-related websites. A kidney-shaped low-pressure system was spinning furiously midway between the Aleutian Islands and Washington State. Another storm was lodged in the upper reaches of the Gulf of Alaska. At first glance, it looked like a perfect twin-engine setup for big-wave surfing, generating massive ocean swells that would roll out across the Pacific and form into the kinds of sky-scraping waves that appear every few years. Long, who lives in San Clemente, about halfway between L.A. and San Diego, is constantly on watch for these events. As he looked more closely at the weather models, though, he saw that the two storms, instead of moving east across the 颅Pacific Northwest, would likely turn south and rake the entire West Coast, which meant the waves, although huge, would be chopped up and ruined by storm winds.

Greg Long

Long off the Northern California coast in 2010

Greg Long

Long in San Clemente, California

By January 3, two days before the swell was due to hit the West Coast, big-wave surfers everywhere were trying to figure out how to play it. There might be a few hours of smooth conditions at Maverick鈥檚, the infamous cold-water break south of San Francisco. If the storms veered east over Central California, Todos Santos, off northern Baja, might stay clean. Cortes Bank? No way. Every颅body agreed there.

Apart from being the weirdest, most disorienting big-wave break in the world鈥攊t鈥檚 located 100 miles west of San Diego, in the open ocean鈥擟ortes is the most weather affected. Long, an obsessive planner and master of surf-quest logistics, loved the place because any venture there had to be organized like a Marine assault, with boats, jet skis, provisions, a sat phone, and a lot of personnel coordination. He鈥檇 ridden some of the biggest waves of his life at Cortes in 2003, and the break had been at the top of his list ever since.

On the morning of January 4, Long was still wading through the data stream, watching the mid-Pacific buoy numbers rocket up as the swell moved south, checking on the nearshore surface winds, and keeping an eye on the two storms鈥� lines of approach. He made dozens of phone calls, mostly to Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, and Grant Baker, three of the top big-wave riders in the world, and to Surfline.com forecast guru Sean Collins in Huntington Beach. Notes were compared. Plans were sketched, discarded, redrawn.

Among elite surfers, Long is untouchable in these situations鈥攕ifting data, 颅organizing and adjusting on the fly. Surf writer Brad Melekian remembers getting an afternoon phone call from Long a few years ago when the two were supposed to meet at a yet-to-be-determined break the next day. 鈥淔irst thing I hear,鈥� Melekian says, 鈥淕reg鈥檚 on Highway 1, driving to Maverick鈥檚. He pulls over, takes out his laptop, checks the buoys. Calls and tells me he鈥檚 just booked a boat for Cortes. Then calls back 15 minutes later: 鈥榃e鈥檙e going to Shark Park鈥� [near Santa Barbara]. Fifteen minutes later: 鈥楳avs.鈥� An hour later: 鈥極kay, Todos.鈥� And then finally it鈥檚 back to Mavs. That鈥檚 what he does. He鈥檚 just processing and analyzing nonstop.鈥�

Midafternoon on the 4th, Long and Parsons noticed something in the weather models: a narrow band of calm wind lodged between the two approaching storms. The waves might clean up for a few hours. The two surfers agreed: Cortes was in play.

More phone calls. Collins was reluctant to support a Cortes trip, arguing that 颅chances were still good that the wind wouldn鈥檛 smooth out enough to permit any surfing. They鈥檇 have a long, bumpy ride out there, Collins said, and a long, bumpy ride back.

Long and Parsons wanted to go anyway. More calls. Some cajoling. Gerlach was in. Baker was in. Long booked a 29-foot World Cat offshore fishing boat piloted by surf photographer Rob Brown. A videographer was recruited as well.

Everybody met at 5 a.m. the following morning at Dana Point Harbor, about ten minutes north of San Clemente. The ride started out with rain sheeting down, a howling south wind, and the ocean rolling convulsively. Then the wind started to back down. A shaft of sunlight dropped from the clouds. And from there it was as if Long had scripted the day. Brown steered the boat into the Cortes channel around noon. The waves were still a bit raw from the departing storm but smooth enough, and bigger than anything ever ridden鈥�80 feet or something ridiculous like that. It was hard to tell from the boat. The window of good weather lasted five hours. The surfers paired off and took turns catapulting one another onto the waves behind jet skis. Gerlach got memorably swallowed and chewed up by a set. Parsons caught the glory wave, a sun-drenched leviathan 鈥渟o big it looked fake,鈥� he later said.

Just before dusk, Long and Baker motored a jet ski farther up the reef looking for something like what Parsons had caught. And there it was. Baker turned the ski and throttled up, keeping pace with the wave. Long, 30 feet behind, picked his entry point, dropped the rope, crouched, and set off on this swelling dark blue fantasia. His plan was to shoot himself arrow-like across the wall, in the 颅direction of Brown鈥檚 boat, a mile or so distant.

The wave gathered itself and tilted up to vertical, then began fringing along the top. Stuck like a fly on a wall midway between the crest and the trough, Long suddenly realized that he wasn鈥檛 covering enough ground. So much water was being displaced as the wave rolled across the reef that Long鈥檚 forward motion was nearly zeroed out. The curl dropped down not far behind him but exploded up rather than out. Long vanished into the whitewater, but his stance was low and solid, and his board somehow found 颅another, higher gear. Three seconds later, he blew clear of the whitewater. Twenty seconds after that, he glided off the wave, began to tremble uncontrollably, then had the dry heaves. 鈥淭oo much adrenaline,鈥� he said later. 鈥淎nd maybe a bit of exhaustion.鈥�

Brown was too far away to get a shot of Long鈥檚 ride. But he had captured and framed Parsons鈥檚 bomb perfectly: it was later measured at 75 feet, which stands, officially, as the biggest wave ever surfed.

Long鈥檚 undocumented wave? All the guys agree: it was five or ten feet bigger.

ON A SUNNY, WINDLESS afternoon in February, Long and I load a couple of boards into his enormous Ford E-350 Super Duty van and drive south out of San Clemente to a beautiful break called Lower Trestles. The surf looks perfect鈥攕nappy lefts bending into a little bay, glittering rights peeling south鈥攂ut the biggest wave is barely waist high. Long smiles and shrugs. 鈥淟ooks fun,鈥� he says.

Four other guys are out, and I join them in paddling furiously for anything that moves. We stand, turn, and fall off. It doesn鈥檛 seem possible, but we manage to get in one 颅another鈥檚 way. Long, meanwhile, handles this little mess-around session exactly the way he鈥檇 handle a day of cloud-splitting 50-footers. He sits patiently a few yards outside of the pack, barely moving. Over the course of an hour, he paddles for just four waves and catches them all. None of his turns are spectacular, but he hits his marks perfectly and completes each ride. Not once does he come close to falling off. He doesn鈥檛 even wear a leash.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 need many waves,鈥� Long tells me as we鈥檙e walking up the beach afterward. 鈥淛ust a couple to get started, to get into a rhythm, then hopefully every wave from then on is better than the one before.鈥�

Long stashes our boards in the back of the van while I dry off. He鈥檚 28, medium tall, lean, brown-haired. Not quite Gary Cooper handsome, but close. Dark jeans and a black T-shirt. He moves with a perfect economy of motion鈥攁 smoothness, even while loading boards into a van. It鈥檚 hard to imagine him ever tripping over a crack in the sidewalk or dropping a plateful of food.

Surfers as a lot are impetuous and unstable. Big-wave surfers especially. This isn鈥檛 necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the greatest moments in big-wave history were produced by guys dangling like puppets from their own superheated emotions. But over the past two decades, the sport has become much more complicated鈥攎ore international, more equipment dependent, more technologically sophisticated. The changes play to Long鈥檚 strengths. He鈥檚 strategic. He keeps his head and plays a percentage game. By doing so, he鈥檚 able to extract every last adrenaline-tinged drop from any given big-wave situation. He can book an international flight, pack a five-board quiver, and get to the United check-in counter at LAX faster than you make your morning commute.

Long鈥檚 discipline has also helped him become the runaway champion of big-wave competitions. Separate from the glammed-up pro-surfing World Tour, big-wave contests for the most part offer small cash prizes. They are often cancelled because the surf isn鈥檛 large enough; some years only a couple events take place, which means the several dozen full-time pros like Mark Healey, 颅Jamie Sterling, and Ramon Navarro have few chances to display their talents. Long has dominated this odd little circuit, winning the 2008 Maverick鈥檚 contest (after 颅being runner-up in 2005) and the 2009 Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau鈥攖he sport鈥檚 most prestigious event, held on the North Shore of Oahu鈥攁s well as contests in South Africa and Peru. Money-wise, it鈥檚 been a middle-class career choice. Long earns around $100,000 a year in sponsorship, most of it from Billabong, but spends more than half of that on travel expenses.

Long isn鈥檛 gutsier than other big-wave surfers or more physically gifted. He just plays the game better. Not many hours pass in a given day when he isn鈥檛 doing something with an eye toward being ready to ride huge waves. 鈥淢y confidence, every bit of it,鈥� he says, 鈥渃omes from knowing that I鈥檝e done everything possible to be prepared.鈥�
听
UNTIL THE MID-1980s, big-wave surfing was a niche within a niche sport. The whole show consisted of a couple of dozen shirtless guys posting up on the North Shore in weather-beaten clapboard vacation rentals from November to February. A lot of waiting was involved. You sat around bullshitting, drinking coffee, playing cards. One evening you down a few Primos and fall asleep listening to playful little waves chuckling across the sand, then at 3 a.m. you鈥檙e pissing off the porch, staring into the night while a massive new swell bombs over the outer reefs.

Things changed slowly, then very quickly. New breaks were put on the map, first on the West Coast, then in Australia, Tahiti, France, Ireland, Chile. Reliable surf forecasting finally came of age in the eighties, and big-wave contests were created. In the early nineties, jet-ski-powered tow-in surfing suddenly made it possible to catch waves far larger than anything that could be paddled into.

Since the beginning, most of the top big-wave surfers have been at least slightly unhinged. North Shore pioneer Greg Noll established the archetype as a Babe Ruth- shaped 230-pounder who was a scary bare-knuckle brawler when the mood came upon him. Texas-born Ken Bradshaw prowled Sunset Beach in the late seventies, taking snarling bites of foam and fiberglass from the boards of guys who dropped in on him. Then there was Roger Erickson, a Vietnam vet with a lumberjack beard who rumbled with bikers, surfed his way out of a bad case of PTSD, then vanished from the scene completely.听听 听

Laird Hamilton modernized the formula while dominating tow-in surfing in the nineties and the 2000s. He weighed the same as Noll but was ripped beyond belief: the Terminator in trunks. In 2008, Hamilton earned a reported $2.5 million in sponsorship 颅endorsements鈥攎ore than the rest of his big-wave contemporaries combined, despite the fact that he refused to enter contests. He was smooth and witty during guest appearances on Late Night and The Colbert Report but also volatile. His adopted father, Bill Hamilton, a surfing great from the sixties and seventies, once described Hamilton as 鈥渕ean and arrogant, to the point where you want to slap him upside the head. Except you don鈥檛, because he鈥檇 beat the shit out you.鈥�

Many of today鈥檚 big-wave headliners fit the crazy-bastard mold. Mark Healey of Hawaii recently dove off a boat, grabbed a 20-foot great white by the dorsal fin, and 鈥渟hark surfed鈥� the beast for nearly a minute. Flea Virostko of Santa Cruz made his debut at Maverick鈥檚 in 1991 while tripping on acid.

Greg Long was named after Greg Noll and idolized Laird Hamilton as a kid. But every颅thing else about Long鈥檚 nature and upbringing ensured that he would be a very different kind of big-wave surfer. He was born and raised in San Clemente, a blufftop suburban beach town at the south end of Orange County. His mother taught at the local elementary school. His father, an old-school California-bred surfer, was the head lifeguard at the local state beach. Along with elder siblings Heather and Rusty, Greg learned to fish, dive, bodysurf, and eventually surf. There was no teenage rebellion and very little rivalry between Greg and Rusty, who is two years older. 鈥淲e made them go to the beach together when they were little to look out for each other,鈥� Long鈥檚 mother recalls. 鈥淚f they were in a fight, or if somebody got grounded, they were both stuck at home. So they kind of had to get along.鈥� Long lived with his parents until just a 颅couple of years ago. His father and brother remain his closest confidants.

Both Long boys were hot prospects as high school surfers, and as a senior in 2001 Greg became the American amateur champion. But by then he says he鈥檇 鈥減retty much decided that I wasn鈥檛 going to make a big run on the World Tour. What I wanted to do instead was ride big waves and get out there and discover new breaks.鈥�

Rusty felt the same way. The brothers did their big-wave apprenticeship at a break called Killers, off Todos Santos Island, that offers plenty of 15-plus-foot winter waves. Soon they bought a jet ski and began motor颅ing into waves at Todos and Maverick鈥檚. Sponsored by beachwear giant Ocean Pacific, they dirtbagged their way up and down the coast of Baja and mainland Mexico and flew to Indonesia, South Africa, Australia, and Ireland, staying on the road for months at a time. Greg did most of the planning, made the lists, took care of the travel arrangements. Rusty was the mellow semi-slacker who could paddle out bleary-eyed from an afternoon nap, get slaughtered on his first wave, then ten minutes later get the ride of the day.

The money dried up in 2006 when Ocean Pacific cut its entire surf team. The brothers clung to their surf-bum lifestyle for a couple years, with Rusty writing stories for industry magazines.听 Greg thought about college but instead redoubled his efforts as a big-wave rider.

鈥淭here are things I鈥檓 missing out on because of surfing,鈥� he says now. 鈥淚t worries me sometimes. But at this point, anything that takes me away from riding waves, from getting ready to ride waves鈥擨 pretty much have to let it go.鈥�

THE DAY AFTER we surf Trestles, Long and I have another forgettable session at a local break called T-Street, then fall back to his minuscule one-room backyard cottage for lunch. It鈥檚 tidy and fairly spartan. There鈥檚 a thrift-store couch, a twin bed, a bookshelf, a kitchen area with a mini-fridge and no sink. On one wall there鈥檚 a huge poster of Greg Noll signed, To Greg Long, future big-wave killer. Long makes us each an avocado-and-baby-greens salad and pops open a couple of Fat Tire ales, and we sit down outside at a patio table.

We talk about the recent rebirth of paddle-in big-wave surfing, or 鈥渂are-handing it,鈥� as Long says with a little smile. 鈥淚鈥檓 not anti-tow, not even close,鈥� he explains. 鈥淎 machine will get you into waves that you鈥檇 never be able to catch on your own.鈥� But paddling, he feels, is a 鈥減urer鈥� experience. 鈥淓verything you are as a surfer, everything you鈥檝e picked up since the first day you stepped on a board, physically and mentally鈥攊t鈥檚 all going into the ride. It鈥檚 funny. I鈥檝e had tow-in days where I get 20 huge waves, one after the other, just letting the ski do all the work, and after a while everything blends together. But if I paddle and nail just one good one, that wave stays with me forever.鈥�

Paddle surfing is more dangerous than tow-in, mostly because your partner isn鈥檛 standing by on a jet ski ready to zoom in for the rescue. Long has stepped up his fitness program accordingly, adding lots of 颅apnea training, which combines exercise with breath holding. He swims underwater laps at a local public pool. He runs countless 50-yard wind sprints in the hills behind his house without breathing, gasping for air 颅between intervals. 鈥淎nd I ride that thing a lot,鈥� he says, nodding to an exercise bike in the yard surrounded by thick foam mats. He鈥檒l hold his breath and pedal flat-out for up to 90 seconds, then do it again, and again, and again. He wears a helmet in case he blacks out and falls off.

Long is familiar with every centimeter of his boards and can do basic maintenance on his jet skis. At his favorite big-wave breaks, he knows the topography, the currents, and how a ten-degree difference in swell angle will affect the takeoff and the inside bowl section. He knows the local surfers. What the hierarchy is. Who sits where in the lineup, who鈥檚 going to charge the set waves, who鈥檚 going to hair out. He gets along well with everybody. For all his intensity, he might be the least greedy, most patient pro surfer ever.

鈥淕reg can sit there for hours at a time, just waiting,鈥� says Evan Slater, a three-time finalist in the Maverick鈥檚 contest and a former Surfing magazine editor. 鈥淗e鈥檚 way further out then the rest of us, kind of in his own zone, while everybody else is hassling, catching waves, paddling back out, talking. Sometimes you forget he鈥檚 even out there. But when Greg鈥檚 wave finally does come, everybody clears out. It鈥檚 his wave all the way.鈥�

Long鈥檚 personal life is just as efficient and goal-driven. No drugs. Very little drinking or partying. (He鈥檚 sponsored by Peligroso tequila, but my guess is he doesn鈥檛 get through more than half a bottle a year.) No romantic drama. No family drama. This makes Long less exciting to talk to than his borderline-deranged predecessors but also uniquely suited to the mind games one must win to succeed at big-wave surfing. Surviving a monster wipeout is actually a kind of parlor trick: Hold your breath and remain calm; let buoyancy do its thing. You鈥檒l come up eventually. In the entire 60-something-year history of big-wave riding, just a handful of A-listers have died in action. And yet millions of surfers, including many of the most talented professionals, would no sooner take off on a 50-foot wave than walk into a burning building. They have the physical ability but lack the nerve.

The closest Long has come to panicking in big surf was at Maverick鈥檚 in 2008. While being dragged along the ocean bottom after a wipeout, Long was pushed so quickly into a deeper, blacker substratum of water that his right eardrum burst. Pain filled his head like a brick. His equilibrium was shot, meaning he was unable to feel his way to the surface. Still tethered to his board, which was suspended above him, he began climbing up his leash hand over hand. The wave passed, but the next one had already detonated and was now moving closer. Long hadn鈥檛 quite gotten to the surface before it buried him again.

鈥淭he leash gets ripped from my hands, and I鈥檓 right back down there, spinning, spinning, can鈥檛 see a thing, just completely lost,鈥� he tells me. 鈥淎nd at that point it was like, I鈥檓 fucked.鈥� Long again grabbed his leash as flashpoints of light began going off across his field of vision. Ten or 15 seconds later he broke the surface. He got a few gasping mouthfuls of air, but his vision continued to pinwheel and it was hard to keep his head above water. The jet-skiing surfer who darted in to grab Long found him swimming feebly in a circle.

IN DECEMBER 2009, with a massive swell baring down on the North Shore, organizers of the Eddie Aikau contest sent out alerts that the event was on. The Eddie, as it鈥檚 called, is held at Waimea Bay and has been the venue for many of the best showdowns in big-wave history. Long was a favorite, given his previous contest performances and despite his ambivalence toward competition surfing.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 really like contests,鈥� he says. 鈥淎ll the rules. Having to catch this many waves in this many minutes. Plus, I鈥檓 just not that competitive. Some guys thrive on beating other guys; I鈥檝e never been like that.鈥� But contests force Long out of his comfort zone, which he appreciates. 鈥淚 do things that I wouldn鈥檛 do otherwise. I take way more chances.鈥�

Long was in the first heat of the day. He limbered up, waxed his board, charged down the beach鈥攁nd promptly turned in what he later called 鈥渢he worst performance of my life.鈥� After the first round, he was sitting in 24th place out of 28 surfers. Comfortably atop the leader board was none other than Kelly Slater, the most successful pro surfer in history and winner of the 2002 Eddie. Meanwhile, the surf was rising and the huge crowd had been worked into a kind of sunbaked big-wave 颅ecstasy. Incredible things kept happening: five-wave sets, elevator-shaft drops, wipeouts that looked like snuff-film vignettes.

Each surfer was allowed four waves in each of the two rounds, waves were scored on a 100-point scale, and a surfer鈥檚 final score was made up of his four best rides. Long did some calculating. All four of his round-one waves were basically throwaways, which meant everything he rode in the second round had to count. Slater finished his second round with a whopping 313 final score. Long paddled out in the last heat of the day needing four consecutive good-to-excellent scores鈥攁 near impossibility at Waimea.

After opening with a 77-point ride, Long hustled back out to the lineup, hit his mark, and glided into a 鈥渃lean, elemental, huge one,鈥� which he rode to perfection. Literally: 100 points. Wave number three was a steep, thick, water-sucking brute of a closeout鈥攐ne of those contest-only waves that Long would let pass on another day. The wave, in fact, was not makeable from Long鈥檚 starting position. But the judging criteria for the Eddie are based largely on a rider simply going for it on the biggest waves. Make the drop; that鈥檚 all. You鈥檒l get destroyed, and it鈥檚 not going to be a perfect score, but you鈥檝e nailed the hard part and the judges will be kind. That鈥檚 exactly what happened. Long got a 71.

One wave to go. Fifteen minutes left on the clock. Long still needed a 60-plus score, and he waited patiently until he had the lineup nearly to himself. Another set. Long picked off a medium-big one, dropped in, finessed the turn, drew a high-midface line with the curl warbling overhead, and got the score: 75 points, for 323 total. Won it going away.

The Eddie win was a signature Long effort: bold as required, but mostly smart, patient, and tactical. In the days and weeks afterward, like never before in his career, Long had his moment in the spotlight. Newspapers and magazines requested interviews. Surfer put Long on the cover, calling him the new 鈥渒ing of big-wave surfing.鈥�

But the victory also had a weird kind of 颅receding quality. The New York Times, in its coverage, spent three adulatory paragraphs on Slater before mentioning, almost as an aside, that Long had won the contest. Even stranger, 颅almost nobody, save the judges, actually saw Long鈥檚 100-point ride. The cameras missed it. The announcers missed it. Bruce Irons of Kauai, a hard-rocking pro who won the 2004 Eddie with a black eye (the result of a fight the day before), had picked up the wave just prior to Long鈥檚 and was still riding as it fizzled into deep water. While Long crafted his game winner, the yells and cheers, as well as the cameras, were all focused on Irons as he milked his spent wave to the beach.

BIG-WAVE RIDERS tend to have longer shelf lives than other pros, and Long himself 颅answers without pause when I ask him about his future: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think I鈥檓 anywhere near the peak of my career.鈥�

On the other hand, there鈥檚 a point near the end of our conversation in his backyard, four empty beers on the table between us, when I got the sense that maybe he won鈥檛 pursue his next decade with the same monomaniacal focus of the past few years. I鈥檇 asked him a boilerplate question about the high point of his life. It wasn鈥檛 the biggest wave, he answered. Or winning the 颅Eddie. 鈥淚 could say that the high point is right here, right now. Just me sitting here. I鈥檓 healthy, the people I鈥檓 close to are healthy, I get to ride waves for a living. I get to travel. I want to win the contests, sure, and go back to Cortes and Jaws and all that. But that鈥檚 really just part of something bigger, which is to be present: to be aware and amazed at all the little everyday miracles around me.鈥�

Listen to that, I thought. The next version of Greg Long, surfacing. Still a major big-wave player, but tempered. Settled, even.

That was my take, anyway.

Then, in April, I texted Long looking to fill in a few short blanks. He was in line at the airport, en route to Madagascar鈥檚 east coast on a big-wave scouting mission along what is probably the thickest, hottest, poorest, most shark-infested jungle coastline in the world.

No return date.

Crazy bastard.

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Haleiwa Town, entry point for the North Shore of Oahu, is an easy 30-minute drive from the tropical urban sprawl of Honolulu. But drive through Haleiwa late in the year with an arsenal of boards strapped to the roof and the atmosphere suddenly feels heavier, more pressurized. This isn鈥檛 just a surf trip. You鈥檝e ventured to the center of the surfing universe.

How this affects you depends on several things. The number of North Shore visits you鈥檝e made in the past. Local connections. Your World Tour ranking, if applicable. Above all, your place on the sport鈥檚 invisible but finely calibrated scale of gnarliness. Badass veterans with reef scars on their feet and shoulders can usually keep the anxiety in check. The mood for most newcomers is roughly three parts dread to one part anticipation.

North Shore waves are famously big and powerful, but the truly distinctive feature here is how tightly clustered the breaks are. Beginning near the harbor mouth at Haleiwa and moving east, more than three dozen surf spots, many of them exceptional, are squeezed into what has long been called surfing's “Seven Mile Miracle.” From late fall to early spring, the surf generally ranges from five to 15 feet. A few times, it jumps up to 20, or 30, or even 50 feet. Nowhere else does the velvet glove fit more snugly over the iron fist. Warm sand, aquamarine water, tropical blue skies, plumeria-scented trade winds鈥攁nd beneath it all a vast submerged plateau of lava reef, knuckled and ribbed and crevassed, shaping North Pacific swells into fearsome and occasionally life-altering waves, especially at Waimea Bay, Sunset Beach, and Pipeline

With few exceptions, every wave rider of note from the past half-century has come to the North Shore. Long-gone people and events flicker constantly around the edges, just out of sight. Big wooden boards washing ashore at Laniakea like matchsticks after a cleanup set in the late fifties. A generation later, Barry Kanaiaupuni leaning into turns at Sunset Beach with enough force to peel his lips back from his teeth. Donny Solomon, a rookie from Southern California, punching through the lip of a 25-footer at Waimea in 1995, nearly safe on the wave鈥檚 far slope before getting sucked over the falls, backwards, to his death.

These days, roughly 500 surfers from around the world spend most of November and December on the North Shore. The surf media follows. Photographers, filmmakers, reporters, and bloggers focus on the North Shore the way the fashion media focuses on Paris and New York. A framework for the season is provided by the annual Triple Crown contest series, which concludes with the Pipeline Masters, the final stop on pro surfing鈥檚 ten-event world tour. Rides at Pipeline are short but spectacular, and often disastrous, and the reef itself is close to the narrow beach, which is backed by a row of vacation houses whose front porches look out to the lineup like Yankee Stadium box seats. Pipe has played host to a half-dozen nail-biting down-to-the-wire world-title finales. Kelly Slater has had his finest moments as a pro at the Masters, as did the recently deceased Andy Irons. The list goes all the way back to Gerry Lopez, the original tube-riding deity, who won the event twice in the early seventies.

But the contests have always been a kind of add-on to the North Shore experience. What it boils down to, really, is adventure and drama鈥攖housands of episodes, yours and everybody else鈥檚, mostly in the water but also at the beaches, vacation rentals, and night spots, linked into a kind of six-week free-verse surfing epic. Australian Wayne Bartholomew, former world surfing champion and the greatest raconteur the sport has ever known, used to close his eyes during the transpacific flights from Sydney and imagine that he was the Hobbit venturing to Mordor, 鈥渨ith all the dragons and goblins and danger. The idea was to get in there, steal the treasure, and find my way home.鈥� Bartholomew won his world-championship title on the North Shore in 1978, but he鈥檇 be the first to say that his defining moments took place outside of the contest arena: sprint-paddling over the ragged foam-flecked tops of a huge set of waves at Pipeline, say, or getting pulverized by a gang of local thugs near Kam Highway after shooting his mouth off. “For a surfer, it鈥檚 the heaviest place in the world,” Bartholomew once said. “I'd spend the whole rest of the year psyching up for the North Shore. Riding well there was all that mattered, and to do that, you have to be a little obsessed.”

The North Shore is no longer the lone capital of big-wave surfing (equally huge waves are now ridden in Maui, Baja, and Northern California), just as Hawaii itself is no longer considered the planet鈥檚 richest wave zone (that would be Indonesia). Purists make the case, convincingly, that this once cheap little do-it-yourself year-end North Shore pilgrimage has been hopelessly co-opted, stickered over, and tricked out by surfing鈥檚 $2.5 quadrillion industry, or whatever the figure is. Nobody rides a garage-made board, or steals chickens for dinner, like they did during the Eisenhower years. Surfing has more or less pushed its soul like meat through a deli slicer as it鈥檚 grown from sports-world curiosity to small-nation-size economy.

And yet the North Shore abides. The center holds. Every year, the gathering happens at the same breaks that were already famous when Gidget opened at the local drive-in. The objective also remains unchanged: to stand calmly, a Jams-wearing toreador, in the same breathing space as a beautiful, destructive, hard-charging force of nature. Then paddle out and do it again. For hours in a row, at every opportunity, until it鈥檚 time to drive back to the airport, with your adrenal glands lying at the bottom of your gut like deflated party balloons.

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