Surfing Pioneer Young, 43, Is Contending for a Championship Again

Twenty-four years ago in La Jolla, Nat Young was credited with changing the style of professional surfing when he won the 1966 world championship.

Thirty-two-years before that in Mission Beach, Dorian Paskowitz teamed with a local lifeguard to help popularize surfing in San Diego.

Both were on hand for the first Assn. of Surfing Professionals longboard competition on the U.S. mainland this week at the $112,500 Life’s A Beach surf contest at the Oceanside Pier.

Young, 43, is here as a contestant. He is the defending world champion in longboarding after taking a 16-year hiatus from competitive surfing and qualified for today’s emifinals with a quarterfinal victory Saturday.

Paskowitz, 69, still surfs, but he is here as a father and coach. David, the oldest of his six sons entered in the event, advanced and will surf against Young in the semifinals.

In the 1960s, surfing was done exclusively on longboards. That began to change when Young took the title using an aggressive style of attacking waves as opposed to just walking the board and hanging ten.

A historical overview of surfing in the ASP media guide says: “The way in which Young captured the title in San Diego shocked his contemporaries. He dismanteld the favorable style of the day with a succession of hard turns, deep cutbacks and vertical maneuvers that forever changed the face of competitive surfing.”

Shortboards--more conducive to the quicker, aggressive style because of their light weight--were developed and soon became the rage.

“In those days, California had a fixation with nose riding. I mean the Beach Boys sang about it,” explained Young, an Australian. “It was a part of my surfing, but it wasn’t the epitome of my surfing.

“Using hard turns to either slow down or speed up on the critical part of the wave, that’s what I did best.”

As far as revolutionizing the sport, Young isn’t too sure it was his doing alone.

“I think it was inevitable,” Young said.

Paskowitz, who learned to surf in Galveston, Tex., said he wsa 12 when he saw his first picture of a California wave. He said that by using his frequent asthma attacks as leverage, he convinced his parents to move to San Diego in 1934.

Shortly after, Paskowitz met a lifeguard named Charlie Wright, described by Paskowitz as the father of surfing in San Diego.

Wright, Paskowitz said, was the only guy in town with a surfboard. “It was eight feet (long), 24 inches wide, with steel bolts in the sides. It weighed about 100 pounds.

“I went up to him and said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Wright, somebody tells me you have a surfboard.’ ”

Within three years, their “club” increased from two to 50. That’s all it took, Paskowitz said. San Diego was hooked.

Longboard purists, Young and Paskowitz, believe the “classic” form is definitely on the rebound. Technology has brought the longboards closer to shortboards in weight and maneuverability.

Paskowitz went so far as to say that the new longboards will bring an end to shortboards by the turn of the century.

Perhaps, can hang around long enough to lead that revolution, too.

Surfing Notes

The men’s main competition produced some great quarterfinal heats, with the margins of victory being just 1.2, 2.4, 2.5 and 8.5 points. England’s Martin Potter and Hawaii’s Derek Hoadvanced to one of today’s semifinals, and Australia’s Barton Lynch and Hawaii’s Sunny Garcia reached the other. Potter is the defending world champion. Ho, the nephew of entertainer Don Ho, finished second overall on the tour in 1989. In the women’s division, Santa Barbara’s Kim Mearig and Australia’s Pam Burridge advanced to one semifinal, Australia’s Wendy Botha and Florida’s Lisa Anderson to the other . . . Today’s final rounds begin at 8 a.m. . . . One of the many sideline attractions Saturday was the Life’s A Beach Bad Boy look-alike contest. Cody Ramsey of Salinas won unanimously, bearing an incredible likeness to the clothing company’s emblem. The crowd loved it . . . because 10-year-old Cody easily beat out seven adult entrants.