San Clemente Surfing : Comen Stands Alone in the Final

Everyone knows someone like Craig Comen, the surfer. He’s the guy reading tomes at the library while everyone else is out dancing. The guy whose favorite team sport is chess. Comen, of Huntington Beach, surfs the way hermits live--happy, and waves away from the crashing crowd.

Comen, the winner of the Boarder Line Pro-Am surfing event and $2,000 Sunday at San Clemente Pier, says it’s safest that way. At least it was safe enough for him to defeat runner-up Jim Hogan of San Clemente and Vista’s Joey Buran. Buran, the founder of the Professional Surfing Assn. of America, took third place in his first PSAA final.

“I had an opposite rhythm from everybody else,” said Comen, 26, who was surfing alone, rather than in a pack with the rest of the competitors. Comen said, “I tried staying away from everybody else. If you’re by yourself you can be concentrating on surfing, not hassling.”

Which was good strategy. Over in the body jam of the rest of the finals field, Andy Fomenko of Carlsbad swerved perilously close to Buran, flinging both surfers into the water and Fomenko into fourth place. He was called for interference so only his five best rides counted instead of six, placing him in an almost unwinnable situation.

Comen, though, was avoiding the traffic jam and the chance of being slapped with an interference penalty that would cost him the tournament as he unveiled new moves in the final.

“You can’t trust them, they may be my friends and stuff, but we’re all out here to compete,” Comen said. “They can get behind you and you can get an interference. I think in the world today trust is a little-known word, not just in surfing.

“Even on the freeways I stay really far from everyone.”

His distancing from the crowd should continue into the upcoming Op Pro tournament at Huntington Beach. As one of the top three finishers, Comen will be seeded so he will automatically advance to the tournament’s third round rather than compete against the masses in the first two rounds.

“That’s a Godsend,” Comen said.

His championship also moved Comen from eighth to fourth place in the U.S. Pro Tour ratings. Comen won the Maui & Sons Classic at Salt Creek in June.

Mike Stewart of Kona, Hawaii, won the bodyboarding event and $1,000. Danny Kim of Waianae, Hawaii, finished second and Kevin Cerv Leucadia was third.

Jonathon Paskowitz of San Clemente won the longboarding championship and $1,000. Dale Dobson of Oceanside was second and Matt Carter San Clemente third. Israel Paskowitz, who was married shortly after surfing Saturday, wound up fifth.