Outside magazine did a cover story on Lisa Andersen 18 years ago and called her "the first true female surf star, period." It was that smug "period" that made me want to dump a bucket of ice water on the writer's head and shoulders, frog-march her to Joyce Hoffman's front door, then make ring the bell, kneel, kiss Hoffman's feet, and whisper 10,000 apologies.

Joyce Hoffman. The Blonde Surf Goddess. Surfing's first two-time world champion, Los Angeles Times "Women of the Year," profiled in Seventeen, Life and Sports Illustrated. The smiling face of Triumph Motor Company, who put Joyce in a full-page ad and gave her zippy new red-on-white Spitfire Mk2 convertible.

Anyone who saw Hoffman glamming around PCH in that Spitfire, wearing Ray-Bans, white teeth flashing, blonde hair flowing off that perfect profile, knows that she was the first true female surf start. Period.

Today is the 49th anniversary of Hoffman's first world title win. She didn't break a sweat getting to the winner's podium.

The '65 titles were held in Peru. Was that your first big overseas trip?

Not counting Hawaii, that was my first real overseas trip, yes.

Surfing was such a different thing there, compared to California. It was just the elite, you know? The whole country—you were either super rich, or you had nothing. Waikiki Surf Club, which was the center of it all, was just this ridiculously fancy place. Surf caddies would carry your board from the club to the water, after waxing it for you. I’d never seen anything like that before. And we went to the palace in Lima and met the president. Of the whole country. Stuff like that just didn’t happen in Orange County.

Years later, we started reading about how crazy those Peru trips were. Radical parties, hookers, drugs, everything the rich local surfers could possibly do to show the visiting surfers a good time. I’m guessing that the women competitors were left out of all that?

(Laughs) I wasn’t part of any of that, no. I was too young. And I wasn’t doing stuff like that anyway; I was such a stick-in-the-mud! What I do remember was [contest director and Club Waikiki member] Eduardo Arena chasing me around the pool. He was kind of a lech, and really used to getting his own way, and I just remember being kind of horrified that I was having to put pool chairs between me and the contest director, for God’s sake.

There’s a video clip floating around of the contest, and to be honest it didn’t look like you had much competition in that one.

It was sort of a misnomer to call that one a “world contest.” There weren’t many women there from other countries, apart from the three of us who came from California. All of us from the Long Beach Surf Club, I might add! So it was a pretty thin field of women. And the local women tried hard, but they just weren’t up to our caliber—by a long shot.

The California girls; that was you, Nancy Nelson and Candy Calhoun?

It was! It was a Long Beach Surf Club contest, that’s pretty much how it felt.

It’s amazing, looking back at the surf mags, how little press the women’s competitors got for that contest. SURFER didn’t even bother to print the women’s results.

That was just typical for back then. But you know, on the other hand, the 

 ran story after story about how the girls were doing in Peru. John Washington, I still talk to him now and then, he was a young reporter, and he got the surf beat for the paper, and he was all over that contest. He was the one who nicknamed me the Blond Goddess. So the surfing world wasn’t paying attention to us, but John was, and the 

You won the world title again in 1966, in San Diego, and that time there was a little more competition. Joey Hamasaki was really good, and Mimi Munro from Florida. But it was a three-round contest, you won the first two, and actually had it in the bag before the final round even started.

The San Diego deal felt much more like a real world contest. Teams from all over, and I don’t know—it just felt like the closest thing to the Olympics that surfing had ever seen. By that time, you know, I had just become this really competitive athlete. It could have been any sport. I dabbled in tennis, skiing. I happened to like surfing best, but really it was a thing where—I just really really wanted to win. And this was at a time when pretty much all surfers, guys and girls both, weren’t all that serious about winning. It was just this fun thing that everybody enjoyed, and then “Oh, there’s a contest this weekend, what the heck, I guess I’ll enter it.” I was pretty much the only one that was really serious about it.

Corky was, yes. We were both serious. Lots of training, lots of practice. For me, I mean—Joey Hamasaki was a hell of a good surfer. Innately, I think she was a better surfer than I was. But she didn’t have the drive I had. I just out-competed everybody. Same with Corky. He wasn’t the best surfer out there, but he was the best competitor.

How did that make itself clear during an actual heat?

For one thing, I paddled faster than the others. You usually got scored on your best three waves, but there was no limit to how many waves you could catch, and I went out there knowing that I was going to ride more waves than anybody, which meant I had a better chance at picking up three good ones. I’d have eight waves in a 15-minute heat, and the other girls all had three or four.

[Pause] I was pretty confident. I was prepared, yes. Barring something unforeseen, I figured I was going to win.

Then it’s 1967 and here comes little 14-year-old Margo Godfrey. How well did you know her?

We didn’t really have any kind of relationship. [Long pause] I wasn’t super-friendly with many of my competitors. I wanted to beat them. Margo, she was so young, and sort of—rudderless for a while. Apart from the surfing part of it, she was just traveling on such a different path than I was. We were never more than acquaintances.

Was it hard for you when she started to do so well?

Yes and no. I think by then I was starting to look at what was after competitive surfing. There was no career there, no money at all, and it was like, well, how many times do you really want to win the Redondo Open, or whatever? But sure, when Margo came along it was a slap in the face. You never leave the top easily.

JOYCE HOFFMAN: CONFESSIONS OF A BLONDE GODDESS

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