Model Surfer : Manhattan Beach’s Ted Robinson Rides Fashion Wave

Surfers all across the world love to kick back. But Ted Robinson, a surfer, still can’t quite fathom why anyone would pay him big bucks for lounging on the beach.

Robinson’s meal ticket for the past four years has been his surfboard, and his face is familiar on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals world tour. But a year ago, that face began popping up in advertisements.

And when Robinson found the signatures of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren scrawled at the bottom of his paychecks--for as much as $2,000 a day--he had to scratch his head and smile.

“I can’t believe they’d pay me that much for just lyin’ back,” said Robinson, 25, of Manhattan Beach. “That’s nice, easy money.”

And it comes a lot easier than the money on the men’s pro surfing circuit. Young pros today like Robinson are kindred spirits to the barnstorming pilots of the 1920s, but their aerials are performed off the lip of a wave, not high above a rural airfield.

They’re living out a surfer’s dream--to circle the globe in search of the elusive Perfect Wave, with the competition and surfing sponsors helping to pay the bills.

Robinson, the 15th-ranked men’s professional in the world and a part-time model, is quick to point out that a traveling surfer’s life style is anything but pampered. It’s often hard work.

Robinson’s travel itinerary between surf events in June, for example, reads like this: from Niijima, Japan, to Sandy Beach, Oahu, Hawaii, then to Laguna Beach, then to Seaside Heights, N.J., and then off again to Cape Town, South Africa. That’s a lot of thumbtacks on the old world map at home.

Fortunately for Robinson, his star is rising in surfing as well as in the modeling world. After a pair of impressive back-to-back outings--at the Marui Japan Open at Niijima and the TDK/Gotcha Pro in Oahu--Robinson’s world ranking soared from 32nd to 15th.

He’s had plenty of chances to defend his rating. This month, Robinson has already surfed South Africa’s Sea Harvest Surfers International in Cape Town, followed by an event the next week up the coast at Durban. Last weekend he hopped a plane for Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the $70,000 Sun Deck Classic World Contest.

Fellow Californians will get a chance to see Robinson in $70,000 Op Pro in Huntington Beach this week.

“There aren’t any breaks,” Robinson said. This season the professional surfers group has packed all events in before December in order to operate on a calendar year.

Globe-hopping may have a romantic ring to some, but Robinson admits it wears him down a bit. “I don’t hang around after a contest if I lose,” he said. “If I did, I’d go nuts.”

For 11 days in Japan, Robinson lived more like a monk than a touring pro.

The Marui Pro was held on Niijima Island, which is a stomach-pumping eight-hour ferry ride from Tokyo. Niijima had its charms, but the isolation was grueling for Robinson. The island’s main nocturnal attraction was a bowling alley, and the highlight of Robinson’s trip was watching two Japanese businessmen get into a fistfight in the middle of a shopping mall.

“We did some bowling,” Robinson said. “And we drank a couple Kirins every night to get to sleep.”

Robinson’s companions are a pack of surfers from all around the world, including a handful of board-rats from South Africa, Japan, England, France and Brazil. The aggressive Australian contingent--spearheaded by current world champion Damien Hardman and “mates” Barton Lynch, Gary Elkerton and Tom Carroll--still dominates the professional tour and has for some time.

“They’re ragers,” said Robinson of the Australians. “Aussies are such a water-oriented race that they’re natural surfers. And beer lovers. I guess they just have a little more animal in ‘em.”

Two years ago the world crown was held by a California-bred animal, Santa Barbara’s Tom Curren. Curren, Robinson and Chris Frohoff are the brightest surfing stars in the state. The Californians, coupled with Hawaiians like Hans Hedemann, Sunny Garcia, Derek Ho and his brother Michael, represent the United States on the professional tour.

When these young gaijins (foreigners) carry their board bags--with as many as three surfboards in them--through the crowded airport terminal in Tokyo, the imaginations of the Japanese run rampant.

“The consensus is that we’re carrying bodies,” Robinson said. “Dead bodies.”

Robinson admitted to a wild, rowdy element among the touring surfers. “We just beat rental cars to death,” he said. “You know, go for a lot of brake slides, burnouts, skids. Whatever it takes to entertain yourself. We don’t treat hotels too well either, that’s for sure.”

Robinson can tell you about the time he and some surfing friends got a Mercedes-Benz stuck on a sandy beach in South Africa. Or the time in Australia when surfer Pierre Tostee of South Africa was knocked unconscious by a lightning strike after he finished his heat.

“We called him ‘Pierre Toasted’ after that,” Robinson quipped.

Robinson can jest because he had his own brush with tragedy last December. At Sunset Beach on Oahu’s North Shore, which boasts the biggest surfable waves in the world, Robinson made a crucial error--he took off late on a breaker that turned out to be the first of a monstrous five-wave set. He wiped out and was knocked in to shore.

“I got such a pounding that I couldn’t breathe or see straight,” Robinson said. “I was flying through the air on a 15-footer and I was thinking, ‘This might be it.’ I really didn’t know if I was going to come up off the coral alive.”

But Robinson still prefers big surf. He’s 6-foot-2, tall for a pro surfer--and says he “looks better” on a big wave than smaller surfers. And in a sport where judges on the shore make the decisions, looking better can be instrumental in a high-tension heat.

In smaller surf, Robinson does everything possible to ride light. He strips the wax down to a minimum, eliminates his leash and any stray stickers and wears the least amount of wet suit. He even has his own version of the “overweighting principle”--he’ll ride his heaviest board before the action to make his light, maneuverable Channel Islands “thruster” feel better during the heat.

His new-found supplementary job as a paid model is a lot less work. And it’s a nice dual income. Robinson was discovered at a surfing contest in Huntington Beach in 1986 by fashion photographer Bruce Weber, who invited the 23-year-old surfer to Carmel to do a shoot for Calvin Klein.

Since then, he said, it’s been “just sit back and smile.” Robinson has appeared in the magazines Vanity Fair and Interview. A rather morose-looking Robinson can be found in a Calvin Klein spread, captured by Weber in moody black-and-white tones, in the June 16 issue of Rolling Stone--on the first two pages underneath pop cover star Terence Trent D’Arby.

Robinson was probably also the first surfer to appear in a billboard ad on Sunset Boulevard. A Maui and Sons billboard featured a giant Robinson slicing down the same ‘comber again and again over the thoroughfares of Sunset, La Cienega and Sepulveda. His modeling agency, L.A. Models, would like to see him do more of that type of work.

“I’m too into surfing, though,” Robinson said. “My agency wants me to go to Milan (in Italy) to do some full-on modeling. Milan’s inland, I think. I can’t handle being away from the water.”

It’s been that way from the start. At Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Robinson was a self-confessed “surf truant.” Even a move to Temple City (to keep him from cutting classes) couldn’t quench his passion--Robinson simply rode the RTD buses every weekend to the South Bay just to surf.

“School was torture,” Robinson said. “I was always looking out the window, anyway, daydreaming. I just wanted to be out there with Mother Ocean. You don’t have to pay anything to do it.”

Robinson, of course, is a veteran of the frequently blown-out breaks of the South Bay. He’s a familiar sight in winter, leading dawn patrols into the surf at El Porto, where a submarine canyon jacks the waves up to a consistent 2 to 3 feet. In the summer, much of the South Bay’s promising current never reaches the shore--it’s blocked out by Catalina Island and the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

“The waves here are very, very quick,” Robinson said. “It takes quick reflexes. South Bay surfers are ready for sloppy waves, which is an advantage since the majority of the contests aren’t held in good waves.”

Robinson, like all surfers, has his favorite spots to find the good waves. An ideal escape for Robinson is uncrowded surfing with a few friends at Puerto Escondido on the Mexican mainland or Scorpion Bay in Baja California. His dream isn’t a future in international modeling--it is to set up in a small shop on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, shape surfboards, and “farm whatever it takes to eat.”

If he had his wishes, he’d be out every day in the lineup off the graceful, curling break at Kirra, Australia. Or in the sun-kissed surf of Bali in Indonesia. Or in the glassy salt water of Jeffries Bay in South Africa, where, as Robinson said, “the waves are great, the girls are unreal, and the cultural situation is intense.”

The last one throws you a bit, but it’s a surfer’s dream nonetheless.