I wonder how long it took before Gary Green finally congratulated himself for sitting out the 1986 Billabong Pro. You pensioners out there—remember that contest? Waimea, mid-morning, clean and blue, huge and horrifying. The biggest surf ever seen, to this day, for a WCT event. Gary was on the beach watching, already badly rattled after what watching good friend and fellow cigarette fiend Rob Bain get pulverized by a closeout set, after which he zigzagged his way up the sand berm and collapsed. 

Without a word, Green made his way over to the contest director and scratched his name from the draw. 

When his head paddled out, Gary sat on the rocks, dragging on a Marlboro and trying to come to grips with the situation. Scared, relieved, ashamed, all at once. Nowhere close to feeling as if he'd done the right thing.

I was on the beach that day. I knew Gary, but not well enough to break the cone of silence with whatever trifling words of comfort I might offer. We'd met five years earlier, during my first and only visit to Australia. Green was 17, light and nimble and hot-rodding up the junior ranks, and always the most cheerful person on whatever beach he happened to be lighting up. As I later found out, Green had reason to be cheerful. He'd been born to a poor family in Sydney's landlocked western suburbs, lived in a government-subsidized flat, and rode a train to the beach, 30 minutes each way. Gary was 14 when his parents divorced, and not long afterward his barmaid mother married a millionaire—back when a million bucks really meant something. The family moved to an upscale house in upscale Newport, where Green, already a promising surfer, was quickly embraced by Newport Plus Boardriders, whose members included Derek Hynd and Nick and Tom Carroll.

Three years later, Hynd was the newly-hired coach for Billabong's WCT  team, and Green, an ASP rookie, was one of his charges. Hynd and Green were a great pair. Both had a wicked sense of humor; Derek was a smoke-thrower and an obfuscator, while Gary went big on the masturbation jokes, but it didn't matter, they got along like gin and tonic. That said, there were philosophical differences between the two. Derek wanted to win. Badly. He invented the phrase "bastard desire," which he viewed as essential for any serious CT title contender, and in a perfect world every member of his Billabong stable of pros, when cut, would have bled the stuff. Green, on the other hand, preferred winning over losing, but only insomuch as winning fit into pub nights, rolling pre-surf spliffs, and general matey-ness.

Bastard-desire-wise, where did things stand with Green that morning at Waimea? He'd been traveling with Hynd for three years by that time, so maybe there was a half-jigger of the stuff rolling around the floor of his brainpan. If so, it evaporated the moment that closeout set began fringing in the middle of the bay. And it never really came back.

True, over the next few months Green regained confidence, banged out some good results during the first part of the '87 season, and was ranked #3 that summer going into the Stubbies Pro at Oceanside. Then he flamed out in Round One (the WCT "no-loser" round had yet to be invented) and did the same a week later at the Op Pro, and 

 when the Waimea incident, along with the futility of trying to conjure up bastard desire where none existed—for a counterexample, all Green had to do was look into the stone-cold hitman eyes of Damien Hardman—put him on a different career track entirely. 

Green quit competition. Turned in his WCT colors, flew back to Sydney, and became the original "professional free surfer," and yes that is an oxymoronic phase, but that's not Gary's fault, and in fact he was very good at surfing exotic breaks for the cameras for pay. He did that for 10 years, in fact. Never got rich. Did not achieve the kind of enlightenment that is supposed to come from extensive world travel. But he kept everybody, especially himself, loose and laughing the whole time.

Bastard desire will make you a better competitor, probably, but it is otherwise overrated. Gary Green shit himself at the Billabong Pro, almost literally, and came up smelling like a just-opened bar of coconut Sex Wax. He is 51 now. If he's as clever as I remember, he's thanking God or Buddha or Huey or whoever for rolling that mutant Waimea Bay set in his direction in 1986. He wisely jumped out of the way—and surfed off into the Indonesian sunset.

GARY GREEN'S BASTARD DESIRE FAIL

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