Bad Start, Good Finish for Surfer

The first step was to get upset. After that, the upset victory fell neatly into place.

Saturday at Oceanside’s North Jetty during the awards ceremony of the United States Amateur Surfing Championships, Stephen Denham of Morro Bay was announced as the winner of the premier event, the men’s final.

Denham, 20, a non-qualifier for this event last year, just shook his head and smiled.

“I had interference called on me right at the beginning of the heat,” said Denham. “It was just me, my fault. I collided with someone and had to kick out. I knew it right away. I got really upset.”

Competitors had 20 minutes to impress a panel of judges with their most radical maneuvers on 15 waves, with the top five rides scoring. The bigger the wave and the longer the ride, the better the point total.

The result of Denham’s infraction was that one wave, a fifth of his final score, was thrown out. After sitting and staring into the water for more than half a minute, Denham could hear people cheering for him from the jetty.

“I thought for sure I had lost,” he said, “but I heard my friends saying I was still doing good, and right after that I picked up the best wave of the heat. I was out for blood.”

Denham’s four best waves brought a higher total than any other competitor’s five, and he wound up with the title anyway.

Six surfers qualified for the final heat in each of 15 events at the amateur contest, which was held for the first time in Oceanside. Most closely watched were the men’s (ages 18-24) and junior men’s (15-17) finals, as most future professionals emerge from these divisions. Akila Aipa of Honolulu finished second to Denham.

In the junior men’s final, Cardiff’s Rob Machado finished third behind Jeff Deffenbaugh of Huntington Beach and Danny Melhado of Indialantic, Fla.

“My goal was to make finals,” said Machado, a junior at San Dieguito High School. “There are a lot of good surfers in this contest.”

Make that were a lot of good surfers. Machado was responsible for the absence of, most noticeably, favored Kelly Slater, eliminated in Friday’s semifinals in the heat won by Machado.

“I had my best heat in the semis,” Machado said. So good, in fact, that the semifinal heat will be talked about long after the final has been forgotten.

“I’ll tell you,” said Jim Machado, Rob’s father and coach of the U.S. national team, “what people are going to remember is the semifinal and the field of surfers Rob beat to get into the finals.”

Said Rob Machado: “I just took each heat as they came. There weren’t too many good waves in our heat, but the ones I caught were OK. I was struggling out there. I did have one pretty good tube ride.”

Jim Machado competed in the grandmasters (45-over) but was eliminated earlier in the week and left it up to his brother, Ed Machado of Leucadia, to keep the family rolling by finishing third in the senior men’s (35-44) final.

The only San Diego surfer in the finals of a woman’s event was Chris Zeitler, 23, of Solana Beach. Zeitler, a recent graduate of UC San Diego, finished fourth in the women’s (19-25) final.

“I was happy just to make finals,” Zeitler said. “That was my goal. Anything else was just icing on the cake. I’m starting to blossom now that I have more time to surf.”

In the boys’ menehune (13-under) final, Jeremy Sommerville of Solana Beach finished fourth. “I didn’t do that good,” he said. “I wasn’t in the right position to get good waves.”

San Diego’s top finish was in the kneeboard final, where Chris Beresford took first and Jack Beresford finished third.

Other area finalists were Banning Caps and Pat Maus, both of Carlsbad. Caps finished third and Maus sixth in the boys (13-14) final.