This article ran in the March 1990 issue of SURFER. It has been slightly shortened and edited.

It's 3:40 on a Saturday afternoon in Zarauz, Spain. Nicky Wood has just emerged from the shower and is playing the kid in the kitchen, hunting hidden chocolate in the icebox. His girlfriend Natalie, the Black Widow, is in the smoke-hazed next room swapping caustic tales with Gary Green. They’re laughing. Wedged in the doorframe is the rather large and timeless portrait king, Art Brewer, with camera devouring subject devouring chocolate, saying to me all the while how “the guy rips,” and "I just took 78 shots of his heat.”

Wood’s the same as always: quiet and unassuming, despite having posted the second-highest score of the year—99 points against Matt Hoy. He knows he’s knocked the top off any critics but, more importantly, he thinks he’s hit the judges with imagery solid enough to hold his name strong through the final stretch of the 1989 Tour.

Nick moves into the bedroom to get some dirty water out of his ear and read his coaching report. Brewer is in there with him. It’s a bizarre scene; huge man and spindly man. Nicky doesn’t really know anything about Big Art—how, through the years, he’s been tight with a lot of legends, and has the full gamut of portraits stashed—but he warms to the chattering giant. Brewer, meanwhile, knows the keys of rare men, and has Wood nailed as a “special one,” different, with the Presence. At the moment, he’s framing Wood like a fat cellarmaster storing fine wine.

Some see Nicky Wood as a latter-day Michael Peterson. He’s called the Phantom because, like MP in the '70s, during contests he will appear from nowhere at the last moment to grab his singlet, surf his heat, then vanish without a trace. It’s become a game among the boys to spot the Phantom before his heat, but it’s a game rarely won.

Earlier in the day, I'd walked down the beach at Zarauz with Matt Hoy before his heat against Wood. Nicky was nowhere in sight—and with paddle-out time already started. Also coming from Merewether, Australia, Hoy knew his opponent bloody well. “Where 

 he?” Hoy almost shouted, unsettled and wanting to target the Phantom. “He’s a total idiot, isn’t he?” Hoy lost the heat right there, blown out as he finally spotted Wood already halfway outside, way down the beach.

The Nicky Wood story is a most extreme case study of prodigious youth, with an upbringing nearly as heralded as Curren’s and Slater’s, and with three goose-bumping encounters with gods of the sport before his own time came. These encounters fused his personality.

In 1977, Wood had an experience so profound it’s still got a pulse. He was seven: “My Dad has a video of the best wave I’d ever ridden—from Snapper Rocks right across to Greenmount—and right behind me on the next wave is MP! It was during school holidays, maybe early February.

“That whole trip, Snapper was better than I’ve ever seen it. It was 6:00 one morning, and there was a beautiful sunrise. I was in boardshorts, and the water was really warm. For an hour, there was only one other guy out. It was low tide, four-foot and dredging just like Kirra. This guy was way behind the rock, taking off really fast, then fading into a double-up every time, with a super-long section already folding. I was trying and catch those waves wide, but every time I’d hear this high-pitched whistle that’d go on forever, and it’d be this guy so deep in the tube. I’ll never forget that whistle. It just kept going till he was way past me. I paddled for four of those waves, and he whistled every time. He never fell off. My uncle, Peter Cornish, was on the beach, and when I came in he told me I’d been surfing with Michael Peterson.”

It was the original Phantom’s whistling from the deep—touching this little boy with something unknown.

Nicky Wood was already the prodigal son because of his godfather, one Mark Richards. He grew up in MR’s presence. And the media—that’s the mainstream media—pegged MR’s godson as a future world champion at a ridiculously young age. Nicky would surf with MR; he’d sit and watch MR; he’d listen to MR. He became a part of the MR mythology.

When Wood turned nine—as MR and Cheyne Horan dueled for the 1979 World Title—he found himself in Geoff McCoy’s factory in Avoca Beach, experiencing another cataclysmic incident.

“I was there getting a board shaped, and I was talking to Cheyne. He asked how MR was doing, and I said, ‘Oh, he’s just bombed out in a Merewether club contest.’ I went back and told my old man what I’d said, and he got so upset at me, he made me ring MR and tell him what I'd done and that I was sorry.”

Of course, Richards would’ve thought it cute and noble of Nicky to phone and apologize for something so trivial—but to this day, Wood still feels uneasy about going public with such a story, lest it cause offense.

If MP’s Phantom seed was already sown and dormant in Wood’s mind, MR’s humility and the lessons of fame soon followed: “I went to see 

 when I was about 11, with Mark, and it was just about the biggest thing that ever happened to me. We went in with the lights on and everyone was there. The film started, and MR came on the screen in the barrel at Off the Wall. A few smart arses started booing! It was so heavy, the heaviest thing I can remember. Mark got up and left.” Wood still has trouble talking about it.

It was as if Nicky Wood was preordained to draw experience from the best, and his lessons came with great syncronicity. The next occurred when he was 12, and the teacher was that most Hawaiian of them all. The subject: etiquette. “I was staying at Burleigh Towers, watching the Stubbies. Me and Scotty Bell were throwing water bombs off the balcony and watching them land outside the lobby. Then Dane Kealoha and Martin Potter walked out and got splashed. We ducked inside the room, but Dane saw us and made us come downstairs. When we got there he made us kneel in front of him and apologize.”

Wood counted his trophies not so long ago, and the tally topped 150. To cut a very long story short, from the only time he’s ever beaten Damien Hardman (he was seven, Hardman 10) to his current world tour ranking of #18 and moving up, Wood’s life has been a train—a fast, fast train.

He dropped out of school at 15 to do the ASPA circuit; a brutal series of pro contests throughout Australia: “I went into the last event at Cronulla neck-and-neck with Mark Sainsbury. I had a three-man heat in the semi, and just had to come in second to win the title. I surfed a good heat against Merrick Davis and Rob Bain, but Davis won, and on a countback with Bain I came in third. I was really dirty with one judge and, along with a family crisis back home, it all made me cry. I was only 15! Mark won the Title by 10 points. The next year [1986] I won it and Merrick came in second.”

In 1987 Nicky Wood stunned the surfing world by winning one of the tour’s major events, the Rip Curl Bells Beach Easter Classic, in his ASP pro debut. He was 16, and had grown what appeared to be 100% in only two years, after being one of the smallest in his grade the year he left school. Raven-haired and quiet, Wood went about his victory with ultimate poise, and the top-ranked surfers knew they were witness to a coming force; someone every bit as likely to rise the way Occhilupo and Curren had before him. It was a remarkable time.

Wood joined the ASP tour full time and flew off to Niijima, Japan, where he got burned in the quarterfinals by Hardman: “That destroyed my confidence. I went straight up to Fatty Al [Hunt, Tour boss] and told him I felt like quitting already. Then I lost in eight straight Trials. The only reason I finished 38th that year was because of a third in October back in Japan in the AA, the biggest event. Hardman beat me there, as well. The guy’s hard to beat!”

Try to relate to this—if it doesn’t blow you away, you’ve got a problem. While in Zarauz, he knelt on a carpet and was able to sit back on his ankles for the first time in two years. In his eyes it was a miracle: “I grew too quickly. I first felt my knees start to go when I was 15— they’d start to crackle. Then when I was 17, after I came home from Japan, I went surfing at Ballina. I was doing lots of pig dogs [backhand tube-riding], and when I came in my leg was all puffed up. I went straight to Sydney for arthroscopic surgery. The next day I tried to walk but collapsed.

“Anyway, the doctor said I’d be surfing in three weeks, but it turned into three months. Afterward, a physiotherapist told me to try to surf again—which wasn’t great advice. For the next year I was in a lot of pain and could only surf my heats. No freesurfing inbetween. I would’ve skipped the Tour that year [1988], except my sponsor said they weren’t going to pay me unless I stayed on.

“All through ’88 I was getting different opinions, and I didn’t know what to do. Back home in November, I went to see a muscle therapist because the problem had gotten much worse. Before the November contests, I went to the top sports doctors, and they told me straight off to have the operation the next morning. But I had to compete, or drop out of the Top 30. That was when I saw the muscle therapist, and he s helped me much more—I didn't have the operation. But I also didn’t do all the training I was supposed to be doing because I was bummed at missing the Top 16 by having to skip Hawaii. And I didn’t have a chick, so I was going nuts at the time.”

Despite his crippling handicap, Wood was rated 13th before Hawaii. A lot has been written about Marty Thomas’ rise from 44th to 12th in ’88, but Wood's effort—from 38th to 13th, while suffering from semi-debilitating knee problems—was the most awe-inspiring rise in the history of pro surfing; an incredible athletic achievement. Wood subsequently plummeted to 25th after missing the three events in Hawaii, and spent the following two months bouncing between training endeavors—packing muscle around his knees by day, and packing muscle on his pisser’s arm at the Crazy Horse Tavern at night.

Says his driving force of the past seven months, Natalie Ayoub: “The first four times I saw Nick him I couldn’t understand a word he was saying ’cause he was so pissed. I was working as a dancer at the Crazy Horse, and Nick started wandering into the club in a mess. Straight off, I’d see the bouncers saying to each other, ‘Here’s Nicky Wood again—why don’t we work him over?’ I’d have to go over and rescue the little bugger from these huge meatheads. One time I left the club with him to go to Fanny’s nightclub. He put it straight on me while we were in the cab: ‘Why don’t we just go home to your place?’ and I said straight back to him, ‘Why don’t we just not?’

But two days later it was on, like froth from a tapped keg at a raucous Saturday barbie. It was Valentine’s Day.

Wood missed the first event of ’89, the O’Neill Cold Water Classic, amid rumors that he was washed up. His debut was at Cronulla the next week and, true to form, he was the Phantom—entered and paid, but nowhere around. Then someone spotted him way up the beach, with his Dad and a wild-looking woman, 10 minutes before his heat. The rumors flew in short order. Maybe little Nick had an act after all. The woman looked as wicked as they come—an ultra-vamp—and there was Wood, his face showing nothing, a young man on a walk in the Black Forest. He hit the water with this bad woman checking him out. And I swear, a feeling overwhelmed me: I wondered if she was sitting on a leather whip.

Against Rod Kerr, Wood opened with 84.3 points and advanced; the next morning, against Bryce Ellis, he posted 94.6; then, against Brad Gerlach, he notched 94.3. He would up fifth in the event, losing to Damien Hardman in the quarterfinals. On that second day, however, Wood’s backhand attack stood as the most flawless of the year to date: repetitive super-verts, reminding me of something Brazilian Flavio Padaratz said at the ’88 Sundek Classic—that Wood’s backhand was the best he’d ever seen.

My mind wandered to the Black Widow on the beach. What was it she had that set Nick on fire?

The following weekend, Wood’s third place at Bells featured some masterpiece surfing against Greg Anderson, then Sunny Garcia, in major eight-foot point rights. This time, his forehand roundhouse cutback off-the-lips were supreme, setting the standard as state-of-the-art in ’89. He lost to Potter in the semis. He followed with a fifth at the Coke Classic a week later.

A lot of credit has to go to Natalie, for cleaning the young bastard up and giving him focus. They have blitzed the field as the classic Lovers on Tour: the Phantom and the Black Widow. Nat’s voice tears the faces off men and women alike. She has left people in ruin on planes, at ticket counters, and at contest sites, where judging panels occasionally feel unsafe. There’s a lot of class within her—and a lot of depth for destruction. Intense people look at her with knowing respect: “One of us.’’

Then there's Nick, the antithesis, all mild and mellow. Whatever country they’re in, most evenings are spent on the mat, with Natalie helping him with flexibility exercises. His achievement in sitting back on his heels is, by itself, testament to a quality relationship.

Here is how Gary Green sees Nicky Wood: “He’s unassuming; innocent. I reckon Nat’s sorta his Mum."

Simon Law adds: “He’s a walking nightmare. He sleeps all day, then goes out and surfs like a machine. He’s a damned good surfer, isn’t he? I’ve known him since he was bald down there” (points) “and he was beating me in the Schoolboys—and I was five years older. Pretty good potential for the future, I reckon. He can go to the top. Top five, easy.”

The longest surf Nicky Wood has had over the past two years was two-and-a-half hours, and that left him in ruins as his body wound down. Any two surfs in a single day will cause pain. “I know whenever I have a couple surfs, I’m going to be really sore at night. It’s upsetting to know other guys can surf all they want.

I’m 18 going on 19, and the years have gone by quick. I don’t feel 19, though. I feel older in the body, but younger in the head. It used to piss me off, people always asking about my knees. So now, when they ask, I just tell ’em anything. I still don’t know exactly what went wrong. I think the muscle just separated that year when I sprouted up. My knees don’t ache when I surf, though, and that’s real important, because I don't want anyone—especially judges—thinking I’m a cripple. My knees are coming along alright, but I know I can still injure them, ’cause I can’t really squat very well. I'll still go for the big maneuver because I have strong thighs. But I was lucky with the Laeanau landings.”

The Laeanau landings—the biggest big-wave dump moves of the year. First was a lip-glide freefall. Next, a purebred hit-the-lip a la Simon Anderson. They came on back-to-back waves on a grinding righthand bank. Had Wood overbalanced the landing on either one, it would’ve been the end of his knees and his career. It was that heavy. The statement of a young man on the razor’s edge of athletic effort. Everything to gain. Everything to lose. Here comes the Phantom.

[Photos: Art Brewer, Hugh McLeod, Martin Tullemans, Craig Fineman]

"THE PHANTOM," NICKY WOOD PROFILE BY DEREK HYND

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