This article ran in the July 1979 issue of Surfing, when Michael Tomson was 24. The version below has been slightly shortened edited.

Except for Gavin Rudolph's brief hour of glory following a Smirnoff victory in 1971, no South African surfer has achieved such notable international competitive recognition as the Tomson cousins, Shaun and Mike. The fact that South Africa is a major surfing power is, then, a tribute to the successes of these two young "springboks" (slang for South African lads.)

Contest results tell us that, of the two, Shaun is the better surfer; he won a world title in 1977 and was close again in 1978. It is Shaun who is the star of the surf film circuit as well and who seems to be on the road to parlaying his surfing ability into a broader market appeal, maybe somewhere off in Hollywood-land.

Michael Tomson, however, is doing all right. He finished a respectable 11th in the IPS ratings last year; he is making it as a surf journalist both locally and internationally; he has promising commercial entanglements that threaten him with a comfortable middle age; and he has options outside the surfing world as well. If he's standing in somebody's shadow, he isn't aware of it, and the sun's shining down on him to prove it.

I spoke with Mike Tomson a few months ago on the North Shore, at Randy Rarick's Sunset Point house, where he was staying. A large swell had come through for two days, and Mike was describing a solo go-out at Sunset while the rest of the North Shore was down banging rails at Pipeline: "I paddled out because it didn't look all that big, y'know? And then I saw that it was 

 big, and I thought 'My God! I'm out here all alone!' I became disoriented; lost my bearings completely. It was eerie. I finally caught a wave and was really stiff, but it was good being out there. I had to be very alert because there were no points of reference. It was all my own experience and judgment."

Tomson prefers such sessions to the nonstop camera coverage available at Off-the-Wall, Pipeline, or Rocky Point, where surf celebrities vie for exposure and hot grommets try to knock off the kings of the mountains.

"I don't enjoy Hawaii, actually," Tomson admitted. "I mean, I enjoy it, like the past few days, because there hasn't been a contest lately and I can relax and not feel that pressure. I avoid or minimize my Off-the-Wall exposure. I try to avoid that kind of stress. I hate the insistence on performance each time I go out at Off-the-Wall. Sometimes I just want to go out and screw around with a twin-fin at Sunset Point."

His next remark surprises me. "I'm not too sure I'll be in Hawaii next year. I might be getting burnt out on the place. Unfortunately, it's difficult for a pro surfer to ignore Hawaii because your existence depends on so much that comes out of the North Shore. Like, to maintain credibility you've gotta be here."

Like many pros, Mike is caught between a rock and a hard place. The essential thrust of surfing is toward the free-flight synthesis of body, nature, and imagination. The direction of surfing professionalism, on the other hand, is numbers, packaging, and marketing. If the two directions seem contradictory, that may be because they are.

When Michael mentioned that he had been pressured by his family to enter some other profession than surfing, I was reminded of many others who also sacrificed business careers in favor of surfing, only to discover that surfing then became a business career. Some interesting things emerged in this area when we were speaking about him and Shaun. "I look at Shaun as just another good surfer—maybe the best—and his success doesn't bother me. I've found my own niches; in many cases outside of surfing. At this point in my life, I feel like I'm ready for a few changes. Like is a succession of changes, and I'm ready for the next stage. I can't see myself chasing the pro circuit much longer. It's simply a matter of economics and allocating energies to areas which will give the most benefit, and for me that probably means not traveling on the pro circuit in 1979."

Michael Tomson was born on August 24, 1954, in Durban, South Africa. His father started out as a mechanic, and today owns one of the largest motor vehicle repair and maintenance facilities in the country. One of the pressures on Mike to enter a non-surfing career comes from his father and the business opportunities there in Durban. Mike already works parttime for the family business when he's not traveling.

Tomson received a bachelor's degree in business, then did a year of post-grad in marketing, business finance, and accounting. "I did that basically because of my dad," he tells me.

Michael doesn't remember much of the actual process of starting to surf, except that, from the beginning, it was he and Shaun together. "We first rode Cave Rock together around about 1968, when I was 14," Mike said. "Others had ridden it before, but it was by no means a popular spot. Cave Rock is easily as powerful as Off-the-Wall and most other Hawaiian waves. Shaun and I rode Pipeline together the first time as well. We did everything like that until one year Shaun went on the pro circuit and I went to university. Shaun has also provided a tremendous stimulus to me, as I have to him. It's been a two-way street. We've managed to maintain a good friendship all the way through, but at the same time, we push each other very hard."

Early local inspirations for the Tomson cousins were George "No Relation" Thompson, Tony "Ant" Van del Heuvel, Max Wetteland. By way of magazines and films, the boys were also influenced by Nat Young, Wayne Lynch, and Midget Farrelly. "A critical point in my surfing was going to Australia for the World Contest in 1970 where I found out where reality was at in surfing. It was a means to measure myself against others. I mean, there was David Nuuhiwa, whom I'd idolized, and I had him in my heat!" (And beat him.)

Another big influence on the Tomsons was Gavin Rudolph. "From 1968 to 1972, Gavin was the king of South African surfing. He was five miles ahead of everyone else, and it was only in more recent years that Shaun and I finally caught and overtook him. Gavin's still surfing really well, but he needs to travel. Shaun became the best because he's been traveling from an early age."

Part of the difficulty in being a South African pro surfer is the expense. It costs $1,500 for a six-week excursion airfare to Hawaii. From Australia, the cost is half that. Cost aside, Mike sees travel as a key element—not just to a person's development as a professional surfer, but also in his development as a man. "You learn to contend with a lot more variables; travel brings added pressures, which is good. You learn how to adapt to different people and situations. It makes you a better surfer and a more mature person."

Although Mike plans to abandon doing the tour full-time this year, his travel plans are broader than ever. "I'll get to Japan and Bali this year. I also want to go to a few islands off the coast of Africa; Mauritius is one of them, and there are others too."

The Japan trip is centered around Mike's recent involvement in clothing endorsements, specifically his work for Gotcha, of which he is a cofounder. Gotcha makes trunks, pants, and shorts. Tomson does some of the design work and provides a vital link between manufacturer and market.

Meanwhile, back home Tomson writes "Down the Line," a syndicated newspaper column. "It's a lifestyle thing," he explained, "not a surfing column. Although if something happens in surfing that warrants general public attention, I'll talk about it."

He says that while the column was tame by American standards, he is considered fairly radical at home: "In South Africa, my column often comes out of left field. Politics is too touchy to get into much, but there are a lot of cultural things. Like pot. The subject is fairly passe in America, but almost no one in South Africa talks about it publicly." The controversial nature of Tom- son's column is underscored by the fact that his pieces require the editor's signature before being printed. “We’re imprisoned by our culture. That’s why it’s so difficult for Americans to understand the South African situation.’’

When we spoke, Michael was concerned that his mention of the fact that his family had servants might suggest unfavorable racial attitudes on the part of his family. He pointed out that such situations provided a certain level of living for the blacks that was no longer available to them in the bush.

"Americans think it's carnage and terror in the streets of Johannesburg, and it's not. The Americans have a distorted opinion of things and it's exasperating. The American foreign policy in South Africa is pale; it's obscure, to say the least."

As a South African, because of the government's racial policies, Tomson is not permitted to surf in Brazil's IPS events. As with Shaun, this is a bit of a handicap on the circuit and has precipitated a promise from Fred Hemmings, IPS president, that moving forward all IPS ratings will be based on competitor's
top X-number of events, rather than all of them as in previous years. Some number of each competitor's results, in other words, will not count toward their final ranting.

"We're imprisoned by our culture. That's why it's so difficult for Americans to understand the South African situation."

By point, Michael was squirming a bit in his seat, anxious for a change of subject. "Let's get down to some good grommet talk," he suggested.

"It'd be fun to tape-record some of the conversations that occur out in the water on the North Shore," Mike says, grinning, "when all the cameramen and journalists are in on the beach watching. Everything is discussed out in the water. Sometimes it's your only bit of privacy."

We talked for a while about current trends in surfing, including the increase in aggression. "The sport is changing. We're slowly becoming more primitive. I know each of those guys' psyche (the top surfers); I've competed against all of them. They're cutthroat when it comes to heats. Yet, at the same time, there is a lot of sharing, a lot of cross-pollination. Shaun learns from Mark Richards; I learn from Shaun. We assemble here in Hawaii to teach each other things. That's what the North Shore is all about. It improves your surfing, and it hardens you. I've been coming for eight years, and to some degree it has made me as a surfer."

Rock-and-roll is a related area of interest to Mike because there are a lot of parallels between it and surfing. Mike considers 

 one of the outstanding journalistic achievements of history. "As Keith Richards said: 'No one really knows if rock 'n roll's a young person's phenomenon or not.' There hasn't been enough time to tell. Surfing is the same.

Perhaps it was because of his admiration for 

 that Michael chose a tabloid newsprint format for his own venture in surf publishing. Like his column, the publication was called 

. "I was basically on my own with that thing. There were a couple of other guys to help out, but I had to do most of it. It was sort of a big responsibility for me to take on at the age of 22, and I worked very, very hard at it trying to stay in business. It was paying for itself, but it wasn't paying for the lifestyle I wanted to lead, so after 14 months and ten issues, we closed it up. Such fun! And I learned a lot from it, too."

The business world is obviously attractive to Michael, and the demise of 

 was by no means the demise of his ambition or his commitment to surfing. "I'm not ready to put on a suit and tie yet. I'm still into having a good time. And my surfing career is not by any means on shaky ground—as far as I see it anyway."

Whatever success he attains in the future, however, will almost certainly be outside of the competitive surfing area. "I'm satisfied to be in the top ten," he admitted. "But kind of effort required to be #1—the type of devotion—is not what I am prepared to summon at this time."

At this point, Tomson views professional surfing as something that is cohering too slowly to be fully worth his while. Therefore, rather than as view competition as end in itself, he's using it as a springboard into related and unrelated areas of commercial possibility. Tomson seems to see further than the rest of the pros, and if he never gets to the top of the IPS ratings sheet it might well be because he's moved on to a different, bigger game entirely.

I'm really into junk food,'' Michael admitted to me boldly. "I mean, I 

 the stuff. Tacos, fried chicken, Big Macs! When I'm in America, it's like I'm in my second childhood."

Along with food preferences, Michael has wave preferences. He likes barreling right-hand sandbars: "big, hollow, mean, gnarly, spitting tubes!" He likes Sunset quite a bit and says it may be the best wave in the world because it's so consistent and varied. "Sunset is unique because it can give you a rush and be relaxing at the same time."

Pipeline, he said, is never that way. "I can't just wake up and go out and surf the place. I have to gear myself up. Pipeline is continual stress. Each year I consider the dangers of surfing there more and more. Is it worth it?"

I asked him about Jeffreys Bay. After saying he loves the place, he changed gears. "Actually, you shouldn't do Jeffrey's too often. It gets boring. Once every three or four months is good. Yes, you can run through your whole repertoire on one wave at Jeffreys. But I prefer the elusiveness and unpredictability of a beach break; it makes surfing more exciting and challenging. That's the myth of the perfect wave, you know. Ultimately it won't satisfy you. You'll get burnt out because there's nothing left for the imagination."

Against the broader background of today's professional surfers, Michael Tomson comes off as a relatively gifted wave-rider with a great eye, impeccable instincts, and a keen sense of how to market the sport. At this point, he is perhaps the best communicator between those who star in the water and those who stare from the beach.

[Photos: Lance Trout, Jeff Divine, Bernie Baker]

"THE SURFING PROFILE: MICHAEL TOMSON," BY DREW KAMPION (1979)

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