Could this be the world’s most luxurious surfing event?

Coco Ho blasts out of the cor­ner on a sin­gle fin. Joel Parkin­son wraps mag­nif­i­cent­ly on a twin­nie. Adri­ano de Souza round­hous­es with a vengeance and bangs the rebound on a three-fin. These are but a few high­lights from the Four Sea­sons Mal­dives Surf­ing Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy 2023, a con­test with sev­er­al twists, among them the single‑, twin‑, and three-fin divi­sions. Surf­boards can work as time-trav­el machines, fling­ing us back to that design’s hey­day. To enhance the jour­ney, to trans­port the spec­ta­tors as well as the ath­letes, con­test direc­tor Ross Phillips added a playlist to the mix. Pump­ing from the sound sys­tem was six­ties and sev­en­ties music for the sin­gle-fin day, eight­ies for the twin-fin, and eight­ies up to the present for the ever-endur­ing Thruster (code­name for the dom­i­nant, high-per­for­mance three-fin surfboard).

It gave the feel of a con­cert: we the spec­ta­tors on boats in the chan­nel; they the surfers on the grand stage that is Sul­tans. And the waves were glo­ri­ous. Sul­tans is a right­hand reef break that wedges A‑frameishly at the tip of a tiny, unin­hab­it­ed island and throws almond-shaped bar­rels and high­ly-schwack­able sec­tions as it zip­pers down the line. Think Low­er Tres­tles, in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, but hol­low­er, hefti­er, and in that dis­tinct­ly Mal­di­vian shade of sapphire/​turquoise.

“The idea is that the event has to feel unique and exclu­sive,” explained Phillips, who’s spear­head­ed the Tro­phy for 11 con­sec­u­tive years. ​“How do you do that? If there were 50 surfers it prob­a­bly wouldn’t feel like a fam­i­ly. So it’s invi­ta­tion only — six surfers. You make it chal­leng­ing by rid­ing dif­fer­ent boards.”

Joel Parkin­son brought his wife and three kids. Mason and Coco Ho brought their cousin Makoa. The nice thing about a one-off event is that the vibe is more relaxed. Instead of head­phones and shad­ow box­ing in the com­peti­tors’ area, it feels more like a group of friends on a lux­u­ry surf trip. Yes, there’s a con­test and that demands a cer­tain focus, but there’s also a lot of con­ver­sa­tion around the break­fast table, an infor­mal sum­mit meet­ing of sorts.

I seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn more about the competitors. 

“You go through chap­ters,” said Coco Ho, who was ranked #6 in the world in 2013. We were seat­ed on the patio of her beach­front bun­ga­low, Coco, Mason, and me. The ocean twin­kled. A sea plane cut across the cerulean sky. 

Coco con­tin­ued: ​“We’ve all want­ed to win for a long time, and I think we’re now in that next chap­ter. We’re in the ​‘cher­ish chap­ter.’ We cher­ish every lit­tle bit.”

Mason con­curred. ​“When we were younger we were so ready to grind and just do any­thing it took to become a pro surfer. You’re just ready to go sleep on the couch­es and pile in, six guys in some lit­tle room, for the WQS (World Qual­i­fy­ing Series, the low­er rank of pro­fes­sion­al surf­ing) or what­ev­er. So you go through these phas­es, like she says, chap­ters. And I feel like right now, we’ve grind­ed it out. We love to com­pete. We love to free surf. So some­thing like this” — he nod­ded at our lav­ish sur­round­ings — ​“it’s super fun to be all comfortable.”

There’s an inno­cence, a sense of won­der about Mason. Or as the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ted Gram­beau put it: ​“Mason sees the world as if he’s a ten-year-old kid vis­it­ing Dis­ney­land for the first time.” Most enjoy­able was watch­ing Mason pull a Mason. There were the fab­u­lous waves at Sul­tans, there was the con­test, but Mason had his eye on a rogue, side-wash wave at the oppo­site end of the island. It did not look ride­able, and your aver­age surfer would nev­er have seen it. But Mason did — and that has made all the difference. 

Twen­ty years ago, Ross Phillips did a boat trip to the less-devel­oped South­ern Mal­dives. There he encoun­tered a young boy play­ing on an old, beat-up board in the lagoon. When he left, Ross gift­ed him a Chan­nel Islands three-fin. That boy would go on to become the 2021 Mal­di­vian cham­pi­on. Now 32, Hood ​“Hoobs” Ahmed was thrilled to be invit­ed to the Surf­ing Cham­pi­ons Trophy. 

“I was born on a dhoni (boat)” he told me over break­fast one morn­ing. ​“I learned every­thing from the surfers who came here. My heroes are Australians.” 

I asked him if he likes com­pet­ing. He laughed. 

“I enjoy free surf­ing more. But I find this com­pe­ti­tion to be very friend­ly, more like free surf­ing. In the heats, everyone’s out there shar­ing waves.”

What was most sur­pris­ing about com­pet­ing in the event?

“Joel Parkin­son has been a hero. To surf with that leg­end was a big thing. And Mason Ho — he’s a big name for us. I was stoked to surf with him. Even though I was in a heat, when­ev­er they caught a wave I just turned around and watched.”

Con­ner Cof­fin is no longer chas­ing con­tests, but he’s as fired up as ever, and far from retire­ment. ​“I just didn’t want to be tied to the sched­ule, and the monot­o­ny of doing the same events over and over again,” he told me. Con­ner grew up rid­ing the long, wind­ing point waves of San­ta Bar­bara. He was on the world tour for sev­en years. ​“I was nev­er super in love with com­pet­ing, but I was in love with the chal­lenge of it, how hard it was to be on the WCT (World Cham­pi­onship Tour, the first divi­sion of surf­ing) and be in the mix. But I can nev­er surf anoth­er con­test and be happy.”

Has his surf­ing changed now that he’s off the tour?

“It’s still fresh, but yeah, I can feel my surf­ing just free­ing up. On the tour you have to be method­i­cal. Every surf is about bet­ter­ing your­self for the next con­test. Now I can surf how­ev­er I feel, I can ride what­ev­er I want. I don’t have that lin­ger­ing thing in the back of my head of like, How am I using this surf to bet­ter myself for the next con­test? It’s pret­ty nice.”

What was most dis­il­lu­sion­ing about being on the tour?

“I became a surfer because it wasn’t base­ball, it wasn’t foot­ball, it wasn’t all these oth­er sports. It was this unique thing; it had an ele­ment of coun­ter­cul­ture that we all embraced. In my opin­ion, the tour has gone away from what makes surf­ing unique and rad and they’re try­ing to stick it in the box of every oth­er sport. They’re like, Let’s make surf­ing like golf and ten­nis. But none of the surfers want it to be like that. I wouldn’t have got­ten into surf­ing if it was like golf! And I know I’m not the only per­son who feels that way. I think the core surf audi­ence wants it to not be like every­thing else. They’re try­ing to make it more com­mer­cial­ly viable so they get the non-endem­ic spon­sors to come in, but I go back to the ​‘If you build it, they will come.’ If you embrace what surf­ing is and why it’s dif­fer­ent to every­thing else in the world, peo­ple are going to want to watch it.”

Adri­ano de Souza grew up in a poor neigh­bour­hood in Guaru­já, Brazil. His old­er broth­er pushed him into his first wave when he was sev­en. He hopped right to his feet and rode to shore. At age 14 he won a pro con­test and bought his par­ents a house with the prize mon­ey. He knew that surf­ing was his tick­et out. He was dri­ven by the idea of help­ing his fam­i­ly, that it wasn’t just for himself.

“I saw fish­er­men who made their liv­ing from the sea. I need­ed a con­test to sur­vive,” he told me.

Adri­ano com­pet­ed on the world tour from 2006 to 2021. He won the world title in 2015. Giv­en how fierce a com­peti­tor he was, I want­ed to get his take on the present state of pro surfing.

“Hon­est­ly, I’m not very hap­py with the deci­sion the WSL (World Surf League) made,” he said, refer­ring to the mid-year cut­off. ​“I think it did not ben­e­fit the surfers. It doesn’t ben­e­fit the rook­ies. To only have five events to show your­self is not enough. I’m not a fan of the finals [at Tres­tles]. You need to be a world champ twice: once through the sea­son, and again on the day of the finals. It’s not fair, from my per­spec­tive. It’s good for the fans, but I’m look­ing at it from the per­spec­tive of the athletes.”

I asked him how he’s far­ing, two years away from the tour.

“I’ve had a bat­tle with men­tal health for the last year,” he told me. ​“I’ve had trou­ble find­ing my hap­pi­ness. I’ve been try­ing to find the joy again. For so long the surf­ing world was the only thing mak­ing me hap­py. You work so hard to get to a cer­tain lev­el — and that makes your day busy. It gives you direc­tion. And when I stopped I felt like I jumped on a boat and the dri­ver said, ​‘Where are we going to dri­ve this boat?’ and I said, ​‘I don’t know.’ So I felt lost in the mid­dle of the ocean. I tried to pre­pare with some busi­ness­es to care for, but in real­i­ty it’s been way more dif­fi­cult than I thought.”

I wasn’t sur­prised to hear this. When you spend a cou­ple decades or more focus­ing sole­ly on win­ning surf con­tests, it’s hard to turn off that switch.

Joel Parkin­son, on the oth­er hand: he seems to be rel­ish­ing post-pro tour life. He did 18 years on the CT, won a world title in 2012, and stepped off in 2018.

“The guys that retire on their own terms — they turn the stone them­selves; they turn that switch and they seem to do okay. Then there are guys who fall off the tour but are still try­ing to get back on — they prob­a­bly feel like the stone hasn’t turned for them. For me, I was com­plete­ly done when I retired.”

How has his rela­tion­ship with surf­ing changed?

“It’s not as impor­tant,” he said, ​“But it’s just as enjoy­able. You’re not push­ing to be two per cent bet­ter, you’re not con­stant­ly work­ing on boards, but the enjoy­ment is just as good.”

The first three days of the week­long wait­ing peri­od deliv­ered excel­lent, well-over­head surf, and Parko won all three divi­sions. I was curi­ous to see what the com­pe­ti­tion looked like from the water, so I swam into the line­up and bobbed around the spot where mas­sive hacks took place. The speed, the feroc­i­ty, the ele­gance — it was spec­tac­u­lar to wit­ness from up close.

There were a cou­ple of lay days before the grand finale between Parko and Adri­ano. Our for­tu­nate sur­round­ings were ful­ly uti­lized: fam­i­ly surfs at a friend­ly break called Tomb­stones, snor­kel­ing with nurse sharks and sting rays, marathon meals at the Four Sea­sons Kuda Huraa’s bot­tom­less break­fast buf­fet — it was all so love­ly. On my morn­ing swims in the crys­talline lagoon, the coral reef alive with exot­ic, Zis­sou-esque fish, I thought about my own rela­tion­ship with pro surf­ing. I like it. I watch. I’m astound­ed by the dizzy­ing­ly high-per­for­mance lev­els of the world tour surfers. I feel for­tu­nate to have surf­ing blast­ed into my liv­ing room — and I stop every­thing to watch the web­casts (it wasn’t always like this).

Tonal­ly, though, I do feel some­thing hyper­bol­ic, some­thing Tom Cruise-ish. It feels clos­er to the NFL than the left-of-cen­tre surf cul­ture that I know. That’s the thing, for most of us, surfing’s not com­pet­i­tive. We don’t exit the water a win­ner or a los­er. We go out there to lose our­selves, to wash it off. There’s a cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance in the way I relate to surf­ing and the way it’s pre­sent­ed via the WSL. Is that because the stuff that Con­ner Cof­fin men­tioned — the pack­ag­ing, the dress­ing up? Perhaps.

The entire surf indus­try has been torn between what the writer Phil Jar­ratt dubbed ​“salts and suits.” The salts being, for exam­ple, Rab­bit Bartholomew, who helmed the ASP (Asso­ci­a­tion of Surf­ing Pro­fes­sion­als) from 1999 to 2008. Rab­bit came to the job not with NFL or Oprah Win­frey Net­work lau­rels, but with a 1978 world title. His love, knowl­edge, and under­stand­ing of surf­ing was nev­er ques­tioned. The suits? The Paul Speak­ers, the Eric Logans — WSL CEOs who came to the job pow­ered by big resumes as opposed to surf cred.

If the goal is to grow the sport to tennis/​golf pro­por­tions, well, then the suits might be the answer. Per­son­al­ly, I love surf­ing for its escape, its weird­ness, its col­lec­tion of mis­fits. Am I part of a dying breed? Maybe.

The finals took place on a hot and glassy Sun­day after­noon. Parko and Adri­ano were elec­tric. Again, I watched from the water, and again, I was struck by the relent­less tail throw­ing, the regal swoops. Parko was ahead for most of the heat, but in the dying sec­onds Adri­ano heaved tremen­dous force into a mid-sized wave and squeaked into the lead. But wait, behind him, Parko, fang­ing hard off the top, and again, and again, and a huge bash in the close­out. Parko won. It mat­tered. But then it didn’t.

“This week has been about as seri­ous as I ever want to get,” Parko told me lat­er. ​“If I was last or first I’d have still had a smile on my face.”

Jamie Brisick is a Con­tribut­ing Edi­tor at Huck. Fol­low him on Twit­ter.

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