Some of the county’s best pro surfers talk about the difficulty in making a professional surfing c

Any professional surfer can easily tick off those glorious few “firsts” signaling that the dream of going pro is slowly becoming a reality. The box of glossy stickers from that first sponsor, the first magazine photo credit, the jets firing up on the first free plane ride to Costa Rica or Indo, the first cruise through a sponsor’s warehouse to pick out a new free wardrobe, the first heat against a famous pro.  
    But there’s a darker, little-discussed side to the professional world of surfing, with its own special checklist of firsts that are by no means glorious. In fact, they’re downright discouraging, and the stony reality is that most pro surfers will ultimately abandon or alter the dream in the face of these firsts.
    There’s the first time a sponsor pulls the plug on the team, forcing a move back home with mom and dad at the age of twenty-five. The first serious injury that voids a hard-won contract. The first expensive surf trip where you get skunked, having blown the travel budget on an important contest that got you nowhere. The first time you find yourself dangling from a two-story roof, stringing up Christmas lights, or serving up chicken dinners, to earn the cash you’ll need in order to continue surfing professionally. The first realization that buying a home and supporting a family isn’t going to happen on the average pro surfer’s budget. The first time you wondered if putting off college was a dumb move. And that first time you understood that you might not be good enough to last.
    Many professional surfers fall off in the crucial testing period, when they age between 20 and 25 years old. The competition is stiff, and there’s rent to pay. We rounded up some of San Diego County’s best pro surfers to learn more about the industry for this age range, and just how they plan to prevail. They were willing to step up and help pull the curtain aside for a view of the black hole from the inside.

Making the jump
“I just dropped my classes and went, ‘Am I just going to sit here and stay in school?’ I always wanted to take a different path.” Mike Millin
    Details differ, but the career paths of pro surfers have a few common denominators. An important one is the trigger forcing the decision to go pro. Life wasn’t standing still when the sponsor’s offer came. Pro surfing was a dream, but the reality was school, work, and trying to map out some kind of future before that offer came. When the opportunity presents itself, the questions arrive. Do I drop out of college? Quit my job? Is this really going to fly?
    “I did basically what I wanted to do,” Austin Ware said. “I stopped going to college because I was traveling enough to where I couldn’t keep up with school work.”
    Even the greenest rookies have some idea of the black hole looming, but at 14, 18 or 20 years old, it seems surmountable. In any event, the uncertain nature of the job seems like a small price to pay for the chance to surf for a living.

It’s a numbers game
“With surfing, the salary pays the bills to get by, and what you make goes right back into your career. You scrape by month to month.” Nick Kovack
    Few pro surfers get rich from riding waves, and one of the earliest realities for emerging athletes is making ends meet on the average professional surfer’s meager salary. Of course, getting paid to surf is still an unreal luxury for most of these guys. But the tradeoff is what amounts to a pint-sized paycheck that, at best, pays the basic bills.
For most pro surfers, the next step up from a pile of free gear is some kind of travel budget—with luck, maybe $15,000 for the year. Bust your ass, and you might land a one-year contract with a small monthly stipend and the unspoken expectation that most of that be reinvested directly back into the surfing career.
    “How glorious is it to be living with your parents?” Layne Harrison said. “How cool is that? It’s not cool. But they choose to do it because they love surfing and they want to travel.”

Keeping an eye on the groms
“The older you are, the harder it gets. They can always go get that younger kid.” Julian Mullins
    As professional surfers age, the possibility of an explosive career can begin to diminish. Sponsors value the experience and reliability of more seasoned professional surfers, but also have an eye out for the bottom line. And that bottom line can benefit from snagging that fresh, unknown talent, cultivating it, and exploding it on the international arena.
    “To be honest, the companies, they kind of gamble,” Quiksilver Team Manager Chad Wells said. “The Dane Reynolds out there, the companies gamble because you don’t know if he’s going to make it in one year or in four years. Every company does take those risks with those new faces.”
    Those new faces can be pretty easy to please, too, particularly for the youngest groms who are satisfied with free gear and don’t pester sponsors for a paycheck big enough to pay rent. From a sponsor’s standpoint, a very talented younger surfer can still generate exposure for the company without requiring the same level of financial backing as a mildly successful 28-year-old with bills to pay. Brand-name association and familiarity is Business 101-level stuff, and the sponsors aren’t stupid.
    “Kids are cheaper, and they’re the future,” Kovack said. “They want kids they can stick with for a while. It’s just better for the company all around. They want to find the next kid no one knows about.”
    Likewise, late-bloomers can almost write off any real prospect of a pro surfing career. The idea is to start early, work for a spot, and then struggle like hell not to lose ground against the steadily rising tide of aggressive young talent.
    “Unless you’ve been sponsored before, and have some credibility…if you don’t have that amateur career, it’s really hard to get companies to invest in you,” Kovack said. “It’s rare. You need to be recognizable even to approach a company.”
    For the black-hole age bracket, this means that the pressure is on to perform not just brilliantly, but early.  

Reality sets in
“I guess right now I’m in the black hole.” Julian Mullins
    As any pro surfer can tell you, landing a contract is by no means a guarantee. Injuries happen. Sponsors switch. Benefits shrink. Companies fold. The latter is especially painful when the sponsor in question is the moneymaker, the lucrative clothing sponsor. When that paycheck disappears, even the most dedicated pro surfer might begin to wonder if finally signing up for a few online college classes might not be a bad idea.
Part of this reality is pure self-assessment.
    As Socrates said, “Know thyself.” If a pro surfer knows he can’t win a world championship, should he bow out and get an office job? For some guys, this is as illogical as quitting an office job because you’ll never trounce Trump. But for someone who knows that making money is a personal priority, that kind of assessment has to happen.
    “I’m a B-grade, supported surfer,” Iain Charlemagne Harris said. “First of all, I’m not doing the CT’s, and even those guys struggle. Seeing how the system leads people along, in my boat, where I’m coming from, I’m not going to be winning the world championships. Maybe if I put all of my energy into it, I’ll get that 30 grand a year. But half of that is expenses and travel, and then tax. I’d basically be netting five grand a year…that wasn’t a reality I desired.”
    There is also the physical fact of aging. Surfing can be a dangerous sport. Even discounting the possibility of a debilitating injury that might end a surfing career, few sponsors will fight over paying the bills for an unknown older surfer guy with creaky joints.
    “What about when you wake up and you’re like, “’Fuck, my shoulder kind of hurts. I don’t know how much longer I can do this,’” Harris said. “So you call your team manager, you go corporate, and before you know it, you’re a sales guy working nine-to-five, driving a Tacoma. And that’s fine.”
    The ephemeral nature of the job is so embedded, it seems like most guys have philosophically accepted that and are there for the ride.
    “I’ve been pretty aware that at any second I could lose it,” Kovack said.

So, who’s going to make it?
“If you’re being paid, but not locking in the photos, it becomes pretty hard to remain a well-paid, sponsored athlete.” Chad Wells
    Sponsors may view their riders as a gamble, an investment, or both, but there seem to be elements that increase the likelihood of a pro surfer’s lasting quality in the industry. Exceptional talent and marketability are of course huge factors, but so are a slew of qualities typical of good employees in any sector: being reliable, hard-working, responsible and creative.  
    “If you are really good at what you do, the results are going to speak for themselves,” Wells said.
    Pro surfers learn business the hard way, through trial and error. Only the heavyweights really rely on a manager to keep their name visible and their image fresh. For most, self-promotion becomes second nature. Sometimes, an education in negotiations and the technicalities of contracts is learned only after being screwed over a couple times as a rookie pro. A surfer’s success can directly relate to his or her ability to attract, secure, juggle and maintain sponsors.
    “Get that logo plug all over the place,” Harrison said. “That’s the name of the game.”
     But if a surfer can’t make the cut as a competitive athlete, there are ways to remain in the industry. Wells warned against taking the present for granted.
    “If you don’t have the knowledge and the brains to plan something for later, really you’re the one to blame,” he said. “You can’t point the finger at someone and say they were the problem. Unless you’re a phenomenal athlete and you know what your career is going to be, a backup plan should be in place.”

Planning on the future
“It’s life, and it’s money and success, and everything you want out of life, and is surfing going to give it to me? Realistically, I’m not going to be a world champion. It’s cold hard facts. Everyone comes to that realization. They want that dream in the back of their head. I’ll vouch for anybody on that.” Sean Taylor
    At some point, pro surfers make that crucial personal decision about whether to bank on a career as a professional surfer. That decision may never be verbalized, because a good way to scare off a sponsor is to openly pursue Plan B.
    And if anything, these guys know that they get paid to surf by the grace of their sponsors. That’s why talk of professional surfing is often spangled with references of genuine gratitude and respect for sponsors, who have created opportunities for advancement and exposure. Another reason for keeping quiet about Plan B is the common mantra that no one who loves surfing does it for the money, ergo; anyone bowing out of professional surfing must not love it. But the truth is everybody knows there is a Plan B, whether it is college, a business venture, or some other sector of the surf industry.  
    “I’m pretty entrepreneurial,” Harris said. “People might say I’m not into surfing, I’m into making money, but that’s not what it is. At the end of the year, if I make 100 grand, that allows me to do what I want. If you’re barely making it, but yeah, you get to surf your home break all the time…but you could be a bum and surf your home break.”
    The seduction is that the shelf life of a pro surfing career is not preset. With luck, a surfer might be able to secure that steady contract year after year by surfing successfully and keeping sponsors happy. From that perspective, it might not make sense to waste those years stressing about the future.
    “I know it might not last forever,” Mullins said. “I’m just trying to do it as long as I can. If it doesn’t work out, I haven’t really thought about that. I’d just have to go find a job and figure something out.”
    And that’s why the most optimistic stay focused on what could happen, and not necessarily what will probably happen.
    “Obviously, I want to be a pro surfer ‘til I’m 60,” Kyle Knox said. “And who knows, maybe next year I’ll do well and can do better so I can live the dream longer.”

Staying in the industry
“Come on, Laird Hamilton is not young. Those types of guys represent a different segment, a different wave, a different kind of contest. There are other creative opportunities.” Layne Harrison
    Strictly competing for titles might not be the most realistic approach to remaining in the industry indefinitely. But surfing has burgeoned into a massive sector, with plenty of room for enterprising pro surfers who’ve heard the clock ticking and are scouting for a safe, lucrative niche.
    As Harrison pointed out, there are new ways to stick around. Ventura County’s Malloy brothers ride for Patagonia, bringing fresh blood and energy to surfing’s grassroots and natural companion, environmentalism. Aerial surfing, tow surfing and especially big wave surfing, are newer venues being explored and refined by the likes of Laird Hamilton, Peter Mel, Mike Parsons and Brad Gerlach.  
    Wells also said that the likelihood of a pro surfer making a successful transition into another element of the surf industry increases if they have been proactive as a professional athlete. Keeping sponsors happy with plenty of promos, appearances, and surf camps is a good way to get in good with the company.

Doing it for the love
“It’s hard to convince someone to pay you to go surfing, because everyone wants to do it. That’s the dream. So you got to do it for the love, not the money. You gotta do it just for surfing.” Kyle Knox
    So, who wants to hear a bunch of pro surfers bitch about their circumstances? Nobody, including the athletes themselves. They’re a pretty grateful crew, quick to express gratitude to their sponsors and appreciation of their opportunity to surf for a living. For these guys, like for most of us, surfing at its best is the ultimate enlightenment, physically and mentally. The black hole is a fact to be acknowledged and planned for, but then set aside. These guys would, and often do, ride without a sponsor. Being paid for it is just icing on the cake.
    “This roller coaster, it’s kind of addicting,” Harrison said. “It’s like gambling. You never know what you’re going to get. Most of my friends don’t make great livings. They’re scraping by, making enough to keep surfing. But they’re able to experience the lifestyle for awhile, which is a blessing and a curse.”