Mara Wolford's essay on Aussie pro surfer Bryce Ellis originally ran in the Spring 2016 issue of White Horses magazine. If you haven't already done so, 

 to read a companion piece on Ellis; it sets up the Wolford's article nicely.

I met Bryce Ellis when I was 16. He came to Santa Cruz Surf Shop to sign autographs with fellow pro surfer Willy Morris. As the official blonde surf-rat chick team rider, Cory the boss gave me his credit card and told me to take Bryce and Willy out for sushi afterward. Bryce moved into my place the following week.

My folks were thrilled: After years spent hanging with the toughest characters in town, most of whom are now either dead or in jail, I’d brought home a gentleman: thoughtful, well-spoken and polite. Another pro surfer, they thought, but this one had his head on straight.

I had a hell of a time getting my head around Bryce's relatively tame Aussie accent. But we worked through the language barrier, and to this day I speak with his Aussie vocabulary in my seppo accent.

I had started college at 14, and was several years ahead of my peers in school, so my parents agreed to let me bail out a while and travel the world tour with Bryce, knowing it was another form of education. This was 1986, Bryce was on his way to becoming a Top 16 ASP surfer, and during those years the Tour hit pretty much every far-flung corner of the universe. That’s where we went, and it was often quite dramatic.

Our first stop was the North Shore. Coming straight out of Santa Cruz, I found all of it very much to my liking: Sunset was right up my alley and I loved me a 7’ 6”.

Then the contests started. Haleiwa was the first event, and that went well for Bryce. The Billabong Pro followed, which was a mobile contest, and after the Trials were completed the whole thing moved to Waimea Bay. It was huge. Big waves weren't really in vogue at the time, and almost none of the pros were for Waimea in terms of equipment. Everybody had a 7' 6" for Sunset or Pipe. Only old guys and Bay freaks had actual rhino chasers.

Bryce had never ridden a board over 7’10”. He was one of the best tube riders of the day, and one of the most complete competitors overall, but he wasn’t a charger.

Now here he was facing maxed-out Waimea without the proper equipment or experience. It was a tense morning.

Bryce pulled out of the event. I didn't think so much about it at the time, but holy hell, in retrospect, the nerve it took to do that: the common sense and frankness with one’s self. Being the proud, reasonable, noble human being that he is, Bryce then took me to the beach to watch the contest.

We watched Ross Clarke-Jones’s heat—the heat Bryce should have been in. The swell was peaking, with sets closing the Bay. Ross was on a 7’6” or 7’10” or something ridiculous and took a clean-up set that washed him into the shorebreak, and up on the beach nearly unconscious. At that moment, Bryce knew he'd made the right decision. Rossy picked himself up and swore he’d quit smoking. He never did, he just went on to charge harder and harder.

Bryce would never live that morning down. There was a North Shore winter, a couple of years later, when Bryce and I stayed in a house right on the Bay. One morning, the friend we were rooming with woke me at dawn to go surf Pinballs, when it was just starting to cap on the Bay reef proper, so that when Bryce woke up the first thing he saw see was me out in the lineup. I had fun out there. Not until later did I discover that our friend's motivation was to poke fun at Bryce.

It went on for years. There were articles, lots of heckling and jokes, and a perceptible freeze-out from the world tour's League of Titans. It is crystal-clear to me now, however, and has been for decades, that Bryce did exactly as he should have that morning at the Billabong contest. He followed his own judgement, listened to his better, and acted on logic and experience—or lack thereof.

There is nothing stronger or more elegant than a man who doesn’t bow to the crowd.

[Photo of Bryce Ellis and Mara Wolford taken in Hawaii, 1990]

THE ELEGANCE OF BRYCE ELLIS, BY MARA WOLFORD

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