In surfing, there is always a huge amount of controversy over historical stuff dealing with who invented what, or who started what.

There is always somebody who will say so-and-so did it first and come up with a date when it probably could not have happened yet. One of the great debates is “who is responsible for the ‘shortboard’ revolution?”

The year 1966 would be the real beginning to my best years as far as being a competitive professional surfer. I won a ton of events that year, including the men’s division, paddleboard race and Duke Kahanamoku trophy for “Best All Around Surfer” at the United States Surfing Championship. Things were picking up all the way around.

I do want to mention something here though that is noteworthy for the telling of this story. When we were sitting on the beach, waiting for our final heat to go out at the U.S. championships, the six of us finalists were watching the junior division. David Nuuhiwa was in it and probably turned in the best performance of his competitive life. There are many photos documenting him perched on the nose doing a killer “soul arch.” It seemed that all of us, sort of in unison, went, “Wow, glad he is still in the juniors.”

This is important for a number of reasons. David was without a doubt the best noserider of that period. I don’t think anybody would argue that. He had a beautiful smooth style and he would just get up there and stay and stay. At that time in the United States, noseriding was a really big deal and he was the king of the noseriders.

Shortly after the U.S. championships they held the world championship in San Diego. The top surfers from everywhere were coming to compete.

Just before the contest was supposed to start, we started hearing rumors about a guy from Australia, Nat Young, who had been surfing the previous week up north of Santa Barbara. He was reported to be riding some new kind of board and was really looking good.

When we checked in for the contest, they made us produce the boards that we would be riding in the event and were told that we could not change during the weeklong event. This was a first, had never happened before. I guess the Australians were sure that when we saw Nat riding whatever it was he was going to ride, we would all go out and make new boards overnight. Which, knowing what we know now, actually could have happened.

The truth was, Nat’s board was not all that different than ours, it was just shorter. Not a lot shorter, but enough to make a remarkable difference in performance. His turns were quicker and his overall performance on the wave was, well best way to say it, “overall” better. We could see this right off the bat as the competition got under way.

This event was going to actually be three contests and one final heat at the end. On the first day, I beat Nat in the semi-finals, but he came back through a losers’ heat to make the final. David was on fire and got the longest noseride on record to that time. I started off good, but got caught inside for most of the heat. David won, Nat got second, Jock Sutherland third and me fourth.

After that first day, David would wind up losing early and Nat didn’t lose again. By the time the last day came around for the ultimate final heat at Ocean Beach, Nat had so many points that he already had the title won. Jock would wind up in second place and me in third.

That was a huge day for surfing as, at least in my mind, it was the very beginning of the monumental change that would be ultimately called the “shortboard revolution.” Many people have different versions on this, but I give Nat Young total credit for starting this big change right then and there in October of 1966.