There wasn’t much to figure out about Nicky Wood’s surfing, which was fast and spidery and entertaining. As a person, though, Wood was a mystery. Quiet. Detached. Cool, for sure, but a little strange. I think it was Derek Hynd who nicknamed him “The Phantom,” and us World Tour punters of the ’80s and early ’90s, in a pre-social-media age, were left to wonder: Is Nicky shy? Simple? Mute? The new Michael Peterson? Those big, dark, slightly downturned eyes of his, along with my own little poetic flight of fancy, led me to believe that Wood was a bit of a melancholist.

His knees had let him down, literally and figuratively, and that had something to do with it. Late puberty was cruel to Nicky Wood: he grew seven inches in a year, and his joints never got over the trauma. Wood’s ligaments had the tensile strength of corn silk. He could blow an ACL by changing the cassette on his Walkman. He’d paddle out for a heat then return to the hotel to ice his knees while everybody else free-surfed—so, yes, that put a sad lean on things.

Along with the creaky knees—maybe in part 

 of the creaky knees—Wood drank a river of beer and smoked a crippling amount of weed. “Pot makes you do nothin’,” as Wood put it in 1995, just after missing the WCT cut—forcibly retired at age 25. “It becomes one big fuckin’ headspin.”

Meanwhile, the surf world’s expectations hanging off Wood like iron fetters. Kelly Slater, Wayne Lynch, Kalani Robb, and David Eggers all faced the same issue, but not to the same degree. From age 10, Wood was the Chosen One. His godfather and personal boardmaker was Mark Richards. Nat Young was a family friend. When Wood visited the Gold Coast, Michael Peterson paddled him into the lineup at Snapper. Wood collected local, state, and national titles the way other kids collected Hot Wheels. 

 called him a “future megastar” in 1986 (Slater, in the same article, was merely an “amazing superkid”), and a year later, in his first pro contest, at Bells, Wood took down Tom Curren, Shaun Tomson, and Barton Lynch on his way to winning the whole event. He was 16. To this day, Wood remains the youngest male surfer to win a CT event, and the only one to win in his World Tour debut. And, as one writer pointed out, Wood could only improve, as the still-beardless manchild would be “getting stronger for years to come.” Wood himself prayed for a hormone surge the way other kids his age prayed for the loss of virginity.

But the growth spurt, when it came, was just this side of a medieval torture act. The knees went; the expectations remained. Wood, not surprisingly, faltered. Career-wise, Bells became not a starting point, but the high point. He never made the top 10. He went from happy kid to vaguely morose young adult—not all the time, but often. Mostly, even while still on Tour, Wood just wasn’t around. Shy, prideful, penitent, who knows? My guess is that, in part, Wood didn’t want anything to do with the low-level vibe of pity or sympathy or compassion we aimed his way any time he was in the public eye. Nicky Wood became The Phantom as an act of self-preservation, is my guess.

NICKY WOOD'S SMOKE-FILLED MELANCHOLY

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