Wave Mechanic : Laguna Beach’s Booth Mastering Calculus . . . of Surfing

Jeff Booth studies waves much like he did pre-calculus. A methodical thinker, he breaks each wave down, piece by piece.

For him, it’s a sensible, and successful process--one that has helped him win the U.S. tour’s Oceanside contest three of the past seven years.

“Oceanside is the ultimate competition wave when the swell is up,” he said, watching the waves break last weekend. “ . . . The closeouts near the pier, running back up the beach after catching a wave. You need to have a gameplan here. There are a lot of scenarios that can present themselves.”

Booth used a similar approach to make his career choice. He tested the academic waters, then took a dive into pro surfing.

He graduated from Laguna Beach High in 1987 with a 4.0 grade-point average and spent a year in college. By the end of 1988, he was the rookie of the year on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ world tour.

“Things have always come easy for Jeff, which is very counterculture for surfing,” said Ian Cairns, who coached Booth on the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. team in the 1980s. “He’s smart, thoughtful, very articulate. He hasn’t bought into that animal image of the sport.”

Which is why Booth appears somewhat out of place at surfing contests such as the Op Pro, which starts Sunday at the Huntington Beach Pier.

At 6 feet, 175 pounds, he’s bigger and stronger than most of the other surfers. He’s soft-spoken, personable and intelligent, which makes him stand out in a sport where high-scoring waveriders are often academic underachievers.

There is little Booth can do about the sport’s image other than be himself. Still, sometimes even that’s not enough.

At Laguna Beach, he often felt like an outsider as an athlete because of the sport he competed in. Most of the attention went to the school’s football, basketball, baseball and volleyball stars.

“I hated my school for not recognizing surfers,” he said. “All they cared about were the CIF sports, where all the guys go on to college, don’t make the cut and turn into a bunch of frat boys.”

Booth rarely ditched class, got along with everyone and took the toughest classes he could--English, history, chemistry, architecture and pre-calculus. What more did his teachers want from him?

He also was one of the best student-athletes to compete for the NSSA’s national team. By 16, he had more than 60 trophies in his room, including those for finishing second in the 1984 junior world amateur championships and first at the ’85 U.S. junior amateur championships.

“I remember watching him when he was 14, just messing around in the shorebreak, and I thought, ‘He really wants to be something,’ ” Cairns said.

Although Cairns noticed Booth’s potential early, others did not. Booth is still a little bitter about how he was treated at school.

“The schools stereotype surfers,” he said. “They think we’re all a bunch of potheads. I was out to ram that stereotype back down their throats, but they didn’t seem to care.

“I wasn’t treated badly around school. It’s just that the teachers and administrators never recognized you when you were a surfer. And you need that kind of support at that age. I was somebody who went to school, did well and just slipped through the cracks.”

Booth attended San Diego State for a year and surfed in some local events before joining the world tour for the 1988 season.

“I only wanted to go to school for a year and see what it was like to be away from home,” he said. “I was an animal back then. I had a 3.0 average my freshman year and surfed my brains out. Then I took my finals and jumped on a plane to compete in Japan.”

He hasn’t been back to school since, and he doubts he ever will.

Booth finished 33rd in the ASP’s final standings and was named the tour’s rookie of the year. He also won $21,000 and the first-place trophy at the U.S. tour’s Body Glove Surfbout at Lower Trestles that year, a feat he repeated in 1991.

He ascended quickly through the world rankings--23rd in 1989, 18th in 1990 and 15th the following year. His first, and only, world-tour victory came at the 1991 Reunion Island, South Africa, Pro, where he beat eventual world-champion Damien Hardman.

Booth finished 17th overall last year, despite missing the first two events with torn ligaments in his left foot. He injured himself surfing at the Pipeline masters at the end of the 1991 season and was slowed for six months.

The injury frustrated Booth, at times making him angry--a characteristic that Cairns thinks might be one of Booth’s biggest assets.

“One criticism of Jeff is that because everything comes so easy to him, he doesn’t always put his foot down hard,” Cairns said. “He won’t reach his potential until he does. He can go a lot further.”

Booth first tapped his potential two years ago at Oceanside. Booth surfed the event reluctantly, only because his sponsor wanted him to, Cairns said.

“It made him very angry,” Cairns said. “He went out there and surfed unbelievable, throwing up spray with all the power on each move. He won that event hands-down because he was angry. He scratched the inner-core.

“He has to find a way to tap that angry man.”

Booth thinks he can.

“It’s amp,” he said. “Last year, after I was out for six months, I came to Oceanside, busted the door down and won it. For me, getting angry means getting focused. And you have to be focused when you surf.”

After that, it’s all academic.

Op Pro Facts

What: Op Pro surfing championships.

When: June 27-July 3.

Where: South side of Huntington Beach Pier.

Purse: $85,000, with $60,000 to men’s championships, $7,500 to women’s championships, $14,000 to the tag-team championships, $2,500 in scholarships to Op Junior amateurs and $1,000 to Miss Op sports model contest.

Seating: Grandstands and beach, but the best view is from the new pier. Admission is free.

Competition: More than 150 of the top men competing in the four-star qualifying event for the Assn. of Surfing Professionals’ world tour. Defending world champion Kelly Slater and former Op champion Richie Collins are entered. There also will be a specialty women’s event and the Op Junior amateur competition.