Garcia gets wave of support for return to elite tour

News flash: Sunny Garcia, who retired from pro surfing after the 2005 season amid tax evasion charges that led to imprisonment and house arrest, is not only competing again but will probably end up on the 2008 World Tour.

Thus, he probably will not have to spend a year trying to earn his way back via the grueling qualifying circuit.

Reaction: Good for Garcia, who served his time. And better for the Foster’s ASP World Tour, which is sorely lacking in colorful characters.

Garcia, 37, would be allowed back onto the “dream tour” as one of three wild cards, which typically are given to surfers injured during the previous season.

Timmy Reyes of Huntington Beach sat out this season due to injury and is assured of a wild card. Damien Hobgood and Travis Logie were injured during the season but are ranked inside the top 27, which ensures automatic requalification.

Only one World Tour contest remains: the Billabong Pipeline Masters next month on Oahu’s North Shore. So Hobgood, at No. 13, is a lock. Logie, at No. 26, is on the bubble, but even if he requires a wild card, there’d be one left.

So barring injury to another surfer close to the qualifying bubble before or during the Pipeline Masters, Garcia is expected to be placed back onto the 45-man roster.

The proposal was brought to the ASP board by tour surfers earlier this season and “it was received positively,” ASP President Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew said.

“So the surfers are behind him and that will go a long way to making it happen,” Bartholomew added. “I will also support it if there are no further injuries.”

Why so much support for a burly Hawaiian known for his quick temper and intimidating presence? Because unless you cross Garcia, he’s good-natured and entertaining.

“I’ve seen him do outrageous acts of violence upon his surfboard after a heat, then 30 minutes later be laughing with the other guys,” Bartholomew said in 2005, shortly after Garcia announced his retirement.

Few believe that Garcia intentionally or maliciously cheated the government when he failed to pay taxes on more than $417,000 on contest winnings, and most believe his claim that he had simply been naive and too trusting of his accountant.

Even the San Diego judge went easier on Garcia than he could have, sentencing him to only three months and confining him to house arrest for six more. Garcia served his sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution outside Bakersfield.

Recently, Garcia, who still must serve four weeks of house arrest, received permission to travel to Hawaii to compete in the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing, a six-week spectacle that gets underway Tuesday at Haleiwa on the North Shore.

“It made sense for me to retire back then. I was facing trouble and my wife was leaving me so it just seemed like the right time,” says Garcia, who is now single. “But I’m still hungry to surf. I still think that I have what it takes to win so I’m going to give it another go.”

Garcia is trim and fit, down from 225 pounds a year ago to 190, which, he points out, is the same as when he won the world title in 2000.

And he’s on his home turf, having been raised on Oahu’s impoverished west side and grown up surfing Pipeline and other local breaks.

Garcia competed in his first Triple Crown at 15, the year he turned pro, and has won it a record six times.

“Only so many people have won a Triple Crown,” he boasts. “There have been a lot of world champions that have never come close, let alone never even won an event” within the three-contest series.

As for the age issue, Garcia scoffs. “This is where boys become men, and I’ve been a man for a long time,” he says, in reference to Hawaii’s notoriously powerful surf. “And I’m going to use all the things I know to my advantage.”

The first Triple Crown jewel is the Reef Hawaiian Pro (men and women), starting Monday and ending Nov. 24. The O’Neill World Cup and women’s Roxy Pro Sunset are Nov. 25-Dec. 6 at Sunset Beach. The Pipeline Masters and women’s Billabong Pro Maui at Honolua Bay are Dec. 8-20. Kauai’s Andy Irons, winner four of the last five years, and Peru’s Sofia Mulanovich are defending Triple Crown champions.

Most of the surfing universe has shifted to the North Shore, as it does at the advent of every winter. Thousands of recreational surfers have planned visits. The surf media is camped there en masse, and industry honchos will move in and out through December.

There are 240 surfers from 16 nations competing for the Triple Crown title, and nearly $750,000 in prize money, in this sport’s version of the Super Bowl.

But the real lure is the gargantuan waves. Event organizers say average wave face height is 16 feet or higher 62% of winter days; 16-28 feet 44% of days, and 30 feet or higher 18% of days.

Not listed is the number of savage wipeouts at the notorious Banzai Pipeline, but it’s considerable. “They’re inevitable,” says Derek Ho, 43, a four-time Triple Crown champion who will compete in the series for a 25th consecutive year.

pete.thomas@latimes.com