"Mister X," a Glen Winton profile written by Sam George, originally ran in the January 1987 issue of Surfing magazine. This version below has been shortened and edited.

The first time I saw “Mr. X” was at the Bells Beach contest in Victoria, Australia. I was standing in the chilly parking lot at seven o’clock in the morning talking to Shaun Tomson, who was wrapped warmly in a stylish jeans-and-jacket combo, preparing to give the blown-out surf a miss and head back to bed. Meanwhile, we were both looking at Glen Winton. He had just finished a warm-up session and was standing, shivering, alongside an old station wagon. You could tell by the gear—the sleeping bags and cardboard boxes and scattered clothes—that Glen had spent the night in his car. The morning light reflected the steam rising from his wetsuit, and as he propped up his board on a log, we could see his breath. And what a board! A battered Nirvana with plenty of dings, even more fins, and a tattered piece of nylon rope trailing off the back which apparently served as a leash. As Glen stood there quietly, out of the car crawled his girlfriend, barefoot like him, wearing an India-print skirt and sweater. While he tried to coax life back into his frozen toes by hopping up and down, she crouched next to the car, setting up a small Primus camping stove, on which she heated a “cuppa” morning tea. No words were exchanged. Next to Rip Curl's double-decked judges' bus and fast food tents, with their bright bunting fluttering, it seemed such a rustic little ceremony.

“Look,” somebody commented behind us. “The Norah Head Hillbilly.”

“Yeah,” said Shaun, “But he’s the best unknown surfer in the world.”

Glen Winton is a new property to most pro surfing fans here in the U.S., but his name is very well-known in Australia. Glen’s track record qualifies him as being one of the recent great competitive surfers to emerge from that country, and certainly the best ever from his Central Coast home grounds. Norah Head is a quiet little town several hours north and a world away from the hustle and bustle of Sydney, and it was here that Glen Winton learned to surf way, way back in 1969. The youngest of four male siblings, he did the natural little brother thing and followed the rest of the Winton gang out into the water, riding a cut-down longboard. Central Coast was a good place to grow up surfing—plenty of uncrowded spots and lots of swell activity. Between his brothers and two other remarkable surfing clans, the Harrises and the Spongs, Glen had plenty of inspiration and push. In fact, an Australian surfing magazine did an article about the three families, playing up the friendly Hatfield-and-McCoy rivalry that existed between them. But while all of Glen’s brothers are good surfers, and Peter Harris and Wayne Spong have made their marks on the sport, Glen was the only one to break out of the ‘country cousin’ mold to go on and become one of the best surfers in the world. Maybe because, before the skill and the dedication, Glen himself believed he'd make it. He entered his first contest at age 11, liked it, and within a couple of years had established himself not just as a talented new face, but a guy who never missed an event. This methodical approach brought him competitive success (including two Australian Professional Surfriders Association titles), but fame and fortune eluded him in favor of more flashy personalities like Cheyne Horan, Tommy Carroll and Gary Elkerton. In fact, recognition first came to Glen not by virtue of his competitive performances, but when one of his surfboard experiments finally caught the public’s fancy.

“I’ve played around with boards all my life. I don’t remember what I was riding back in the early days, but it was probably something weird. But I really got into the twin-fin. I got into flex, where I had these really flexible fins, and that was great. Then when the Thruster came out, I played with a few things and eventually knocked off the back fin and put two small ones there instead.”

Thus the quad-fin—or Glen's version of it, anyway—was born. The result was some inventive surfing and a mild craze in surfboard design, perhaps the only significant design development to follow the Thruster. Unlike the tri-fin, however, which was quickly adopted by pros and beginners alike, nobody could pilot a four-fin quite like Glen Winton.

I was at the Stubbies contest at Burleigh in 1982 when Glen debuted his new design in competition, and I was fascinated by the unusual lines he was coaxing out of his weird, flex-finned quad. Glen would fly out onto the shoulder and then lean into a long cutback. At the apex of the turn, his board seemed to suddenly pick up speed as that small forest of fins under the tail released their stored-up energy, and Glen would rocket back toward the whitewater. I was impressed, as was the rest of the assembled surfing world, and the surf media looked poised to bust open this new design. It never really happened, however. Glen and his quad-fin got the once-over, and everybody moved on. It's entirely possible that reporters weren't ready for Winton himself. You never really know if he's putting you on. A reporter once asked him how he came up with his unique four-fin design, just when the world was getting used to three fins. “My board wasn’t going so well,” Glen told him. “So I knocked off two fins and it went great.” The reporter walked away shaking his head, but in fact Winton had been working on a six-fin design before shedding a couple in favor of the quad.

And so it went. Good contest results followed, but it was obvious that Glen wasn’t going to be canonized like a Simon Anderson, or touted like a Kong Elkerton. Unglamorous and not a bit concerned with fashion, Glen Winton simply didn’t fit the mold of the Australian Surf Star. For one thing, he was . . . a bit grubby. Of course he didn't have a sandal sponsor, he didn't even wear shoes. So he traveled around, event to event, living out of the back of a station wagon, and was simply pigeonholed as another hot, eccentric surfer whose contest program mini-biography usually ended with, “Glen is an exciting performer, and always capable of an upset.”

Then all of a sudden, in mid-1984, Glen Winton was leading the ASP ratings. Why, I asked him, after years of effort did his fortunes take such a dramatic upswing? “I switched to Thrusters,” he says a bit sheepishly. “People still ask me, ‘What, you’re not riding four-fins anymore?’ I tell them that the tri-fin is just too good an invention. And besides, the judges like thrusters.”

The judges obviously liked Glen’s three-finned surfing, and though he couldn’t hold on to his number-one slot that year, he was now in contention the top spots in any contest he entered. It's been that way now for three years.

Yet even today, you can still mention the name "Glen Winton" and get nothing but a blank look. Years after Shaun Tomson called the hottest unknown in the world, Glen is still regarded as an unknown quantity. He’s had plenty of good results under his belt— a few finals appearances and lots of semis—but a big win and wide public recognition still elude him. "I've become pretty used to it,” he says. “But I’m surfing well and doing well, and so as long as I keep improving, that’s all that matters to me.” Anyway, Glen tells me, his mysterious reputation might not be as deeply rooted as it seems. "Everyone actually knows who I am. The problem is that everybody doesn’t know that everyone 

 knows who I am.” If you work that out, it makes perfect sense.

That brings us to 1986. Glen was the fifth-ranked surfer on the world tour last year, and is aiming to improve on that as he moves ahead with his career. Today, Glen Winton, the Norah Head Hillbilly, who used to travel the Aussie circuit sleeping in his car, is now Mr. X, traveling the globe courtesy of a brace of enthusiastic sponsors. “For an unknown,” he comments, “I’ve had great sponsorship. They’ve all had a lot of faith in me.” He’s taken advantage of his reputation by marketing himself as Mr. X—a name given to him, ironically, by Shaun Tomson, who also advised him to register it as a trademark which Glen has so far done in three countries. Winton foresees a whole range of Mr. X accessories, including surfboard models and extra-thin contest leashes. ‘At first I wasn’t too happy with the whole Mr. X thing,” he admits. “But now it’s going to make me a lot of money.”

Glen Winton is happy living on the pro circuit. He obviously likes the travel and contends that he enjoys competition more than ever, now that, as he says, “I’m not so serious about it.” His only complaint is that he doesn’t have time to experiment. “I like trying new things. I get a blast off it. But these days we have a contest every week and this year, especially, because of that reason, professional surfers aren’t experimenting that much. They’re getting good, basic boards to last on the tour. It's too bad. If I wasn’t on tour, I’d have 30 boards and they’d all be different.”

As I sat and listened to Glen Winton talk about surfing, he spoke a lot about the growth of the sport and how much money he might make now that the spotlight has come his way. Still, that part of the conversation seemed a bit rehearsed; now and it was possible to see through the Mr. X veneer. He isn't overawed by the fancy life he’s now leading, and will likely never quite reflect the glamour he talks about . . . because he’s never surrendered completely to the ethic of the typical pro surfer, and because he still holds a few cards that he refuses to lay on the table. You get the feeling that even if he does finally win the World Tide, or successfully market Mr. X and become a household name, there will always be something a little different about Glen Winton.

“My basic aim,” he told me, before heading off to the Brazilian leg of the tour, “is to have a house on the Central Coast with a big Tai Chi room, have all my friends live there with me and get spiritual.”

“That’s Mr. X’s biggest secret,” Glen allowed. “If I explained that part, people might think I’m weird.”

I didn’t want to be the one to tell him.

[Photos: Dan Merkel, Dick Hoole, Rick Goddard, Rick Doyle]

"MR X," GLEN WINTON PROFILE BY SAM GEORGE (1987)

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