Pro Surfing Championship : World Champion Hardman Is Not Happy About Riding the Mild Surf

Damien Hardman shook his head and looked out at the rippling waves.

“You can’t ride the surf if you can’t find it,” said Hardman, the defending pro surfing world champion.

It was that kind of day for Hardman and the rest of the world’s top surfers competing in the seventh annual Op Pro Surfing Championship Friday at Huntington Beach.

Though forecasters had predicted a 10-foot surf as a result of Hurricane Hector off the coast of Baja, it never materialized. Surfers had to try to maneuver in waves that crested at two or three feet. The tide became so low that officials postponed four heats of the men’s second round until this morning, when competition resumes at 6:30 a.m.

“It’s frustrating for me,” said Hardman, a native of Narrabeen, Australia. “The waves were just about nonexistent. I’m a surfer who does much better in a big surf than something like this, so it’s a disadvantage to me.

“In water like this, it’s more a matter of luck than skill. With big waves, it’s a matter of who can do the most maneuvering. But in water like this, anyone can beat anyone else because there’s so little to work with. It’s not necessarily the best who wins, but sometimes the luckiest.”

The top-seeded Hardman was either good or lucky, or both, as he won his second-round heat over Tony Foster, seeded 32nd. Today he meets 17th-seeded Sunny Garcia in the $70,000 Op, a premier stop on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals world tour.

Op officials hope that the surf will pick up, but Hardman is skeptical.

“The worst part is the waiting,” Hardman said. “The waves are so rare that you spend 10 minutes of a 25-minute heat just paddling out and waiting for something to come along.”

But Hardman said he will take it as it comes and make the most of what waves he can find.

“I’ve never done too well in the Op,” he said. “Some people are suited to this type of wave, some aren’t. I finished ninth last year. But as far my chances this year, I don’t know. I feel like I have a good shot, even though this isn’t my kind of water.”

Hardman’s talents might not be suited to the Op, but they definitely are suited for the ASP tour. In April, he became the youngest man (he is 21) to win the world championship.

“It was a great feeling for me,” he said. “It’s something I’d been striving for since I was very young, but to finally achieve it at a fairly young age was a big thrill for me.”

But Hardman had only four weeks to enjoy his victory. The ASP tour is a grueling schedule of 25 events in 11 months in which surfers zigzag the world from Australia to South Africa.

“It’s easy to get burned out on this tour,” Hardman said. “I like traveling as much as the next guy, but it’s too much. I wished they would cut it back. But there’s not much chance of that, because they’re talking about adding to it.

“I think we should cut it down to nine months. I guarantee you it would be a better tour.”

The length of the schedule makes it difficult for surfers to add new tricks to their acts, Hardman said.

“If you don’t have time to learn new things, it tends to make everyone conservative in what they do,” he said. “I think that’s bad for the sport.”

The move toward even more events next year has the surfers talking among themselves, Hardman said.

“A lot of us are wanting to do something about it,” he said. “Maybe we should revolt.”

Of course, Hardman can afford to take a break in the middle of the long season. But most cannot.

“Most guys aren’t making the kind of money the top guys are,” he said. “When you’re down on the list just trying to making a go of it, like I was a couple of years ago, you can’t afford to just selectively skip an event. Those guys need a break, too.”