O’Connell Is on Hot Streak on Pro Surfing Tour, Fever Notwithstanding

Pat O’Connell awoke to the reassuring rumble of a huge swell slamming against the shore outside the house where he was staying on Oahu’s fabled North Shore--a sound that normally would make any avid surfer’s day. But something was not quite right.

It was the middle of the afternoon. He was as wet as if he’d just been blasted by the Sunset Beach shorebreak. And he had never felt so bad in his life.

“The guys finally took me to the emergency room when my fever got to 104,” O’Connell said. “I had no cough or sore throat or any other symptoms. The doctors thought it might be malaria or something, but I guess it was just some weird kind of flu. But I’ll tell you this, it was the worst week of my life.”

It started as one of the best. The day before, O’Connell, a 28-year-old from Dana Point who’s ranked 26th on the Assn. of Surfing Professionals world tour, won his heat in the Rip Curl Cup, the second event of the prestigious Vans G-Shock Triple Crown of Surfing. Despite the onset of the illness, he had the highest-scoring ride of the opening round on a huge day at Sunset Beach.

“It was the biggest day I’ve ever seen at Sunset, at least 12 feet,” O’Connell said.

Twelve feet at Sunset Beach--using the Hawaiian method of measuring the wave from the back to crest and then always underestimating for machismo’s sake--means freefalling down the face of a wave that would dwarf a two-story building. The impact zone is an unhealthy place for even the fittest.

“I had to sit in the channel after each ride and catch my breath,” he said. “You get caught in the wrong spot on a day like that when you’re not at your best, it’s easy to drown. In all my years on the tour, I’ve never pulled out of an event because I was sick, but there was really no choice this time.”

O’Connell spent the next few days sleeping and finally beginning to eat again, and then it was time to crawl back into the belly of the North Shore’s fiercest beast: Pipeline, home of the original extreme sport, where thousands of gallons of water slam onto a razor-sharp coral reef a few feet below the surface.

He got another sick feeling when he looked at his first-round matchups for the Mountain Dew Pipe Masters. The other two surfers in Sunday’s heat were Kelly Slater, the Michael Jordan of surfing and six-time ASP world champion who revolutionized wave riding at Pipeline, and veteran Shane Dorian, who’s every bit as competent as Slater when it comes to carving Pipeline’s huge blue barrels.

“I still can’t take a really big deep breath,” O’Connell said before his heat. “Now there’s a confidence-builder for you.”

After Saturday’s trials, there wasn’t a surfer at Pipeline whose confidence hadn’t been severely shaken. Long-time Pipeline master Derek Ho suffered a horrific wipeout, got his leash caught in the reef and nearly drowned. He was taken to a hospital with a concussion, a gash in his head and water in his lungs.

“I don’t spend much time at Pipeline. . . . It’s just so crowded and dangerous,” O’Connell said. “I’d rather surf a place like Sunset, catch 50 waves and have a really good time than sit at Pipeline and catch maybe four and be scared to death.

“In the past, I’ve had a tendency to freak myself out before this event. Every surfer would love to win at Pipeline, but after being so sick and with Kelly and Shane in the same heat, I’ve sort of got nothing to lose. Worst-case scenario, I’ll stand in a few tubes and have a great time.”

O’Connell never pondered the best-case scenario . . . until he pulled it off. He had a perfect 10 on one wave en route to the seventh-highest scoring heat of the day, upsetting Slater and Dorian. The swell dropped Monday and competition has been postponed since then. O’Connell will face C.J. Hobgood in the second round when surfing resumes.

By the time he was 13, Slater was already pegged to be the sport’s next superstar. By the time he was 13, O’Connell had barely mastered standing up on his surfboard in the waves at Laguna Niguel’s Salt Creek.

He grew up in Palatine, Ill., a suburb 30 miles north of Chicago, and was 12 when his family moved to Orange County. He had played striker for a club soccer team in Illinois but felt he had to ride the wild surf to make friends when he landed in Southern California.

“I moved at a hard age, a tough time to leave your friends and stuff, and my goal was to fit in the mix as soon as possible,” he said. “My perception of Southern California was like most kids’ in the Midwest, the beach scene. So I wanted to learn to surf. My passion was still soccer, but after a year we moved [from Newport Beach] to Dana Point and I was close enough to run to the beach. When I started missing soccer practice and then games to go surfing, I knew that was it.”

Mike Parsons, a former top 16 ASP pro and Salt Creek regular who has long been O’Connell’s mentor, recalls that as a young teen surfer, O’Connell “sucked.” But Parsons admired the youngster’s grit and the obvious joy with which he rode the waves.

“I was by no means a natural,” O’Connell said. “It took quite awhile and a few good bumps on the head.”

And you can still hear the glee in his voice when he recalls the day the final roster for the Dana Hills High surf team was posted and it included a freshman named O’Connell.

“It was so huge,” he said. “I was walking around school that day like, ‘I’m a freshman. I’m on the team. I’m the man.’ ”

By the time he was a senior, O’Connell was the man . . . the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. Open men’s champion. The next year, 1990, as a member of the NSSA national team that included future ASP stars Slater, Rob Machado and Taylor Knox, he finished ninth in the World Amateur contest in Japan. Later that year, he entered and won his first professional contest at Imperial Beach, then won another later in the season at Malibu. By 1991 he was a full-time professional surfer.

O’Connell’s blossoming pro career took an interesting and fateful turn in 1992 when legendary surf filmmaker Bruce Brown, preparing to make a sequel to the quintessential 1966 surf movie “Endless Summer.” called with a question: How would he like to be on full-time surf alert for a year and a half, ready to fly anywhere in the world in search of the perfect wave?

“It sounds like an easy decision, but in fact it was very difficult,” O’Connell said. “Taking two years off from pro surfing, what would that mean to my career? But I’m so stoked I decided to do it. It gave me the opportunity to grow, with my surfing and as a person, and the chance to surf great waves without having to deal with all the pressure.

“If I would have been competing 10 years straight, I would’ve lost my mind by now.”

Before “Endless Summer II” was in theaters, O’Connell was back slashing off the lip for a living. In 1994, he grabbed the last spot of the top 44 who qualified for the 1995 season. In ‘95, he finished 29th, then 30th in ‘96, No. 17 in ’97 and a career-high 11th last year.

He hopes to stay on the ASP tour for another three years, but admits professional surfing is basically “a young man’s sport.”

“It takes so much out of your body and your mind, and when you get older, your priorities change,” he said. “It’s not so much about the act of riding waves as it’s about a lost love for surfing. You just don’t have the enthusiasm to practice in small waves and bad conditions like you did when you were younger.

“I’ve been so fortunate to live this dream, but I’m not afraid to step from pro surfer to the real work force. I’ve never challenged myself in that way, but if I put my mind to something, and put the energy I put into surfing, I’ll be fine.”

Of course, if “Endless Summer III” is in the works . . .