I met Barton Lynch in early 1984. We were both staying at Mark Foo's Home for Incurables, across from Waimea Bay. Barton, as I recall, was chaperoning a pre-teen Nicky Wood, who was already charging and shredding and acting mysterious, but went face-first into the reef at some point and flew home with his head wrapped in 50 yards of gauze. 

Anyway, Barton had just made the Top 16 but was still doing it rough, and because we hit it off in Hawaii, he ended up on my couch that summer while in Southern California for the Op Pro. He was funny and opinionated and 30 IQ points smarter than the average world tour pro. Big barking laugh. Talked a lot, but listened too.

We stayed in touch over the years, and I was there on the beach at the end of 1988 clapping and grinning and rejoicing as he won the world title in dramatic come-from-behind fashion at huge Pipeline.

Barton was for the most part a steady and predictable man, but he could also surprise, and such was the case just a few short weeks later, at 1989's opening event (the CT schedule back then was brutal, endless), when the now-defending world champ gave me a fairly sharp-worded lesson in perspective, which included him saying that surfers in general are "more self-righteous and judgmental than any group of young people you'll find anywhere in the world."

In one of the many social media threads I've been following the last couple of days regarding WCT announcers, I've mentioned that Barton would be the #1 pick for my commentating Dream Team. He's handled the mic before at world tour comps, and while it's been a couple of years, I recall him doing a bang-up job. A few other Facebook voices agreed, and Barton himself, last night, was good enough to drop a comment. [I've edited this a bit, for clarity.]

I never get involved in these type of discussions but can't help myself here. My feeling is that the product needs definition. Is it a sport, or a free surfing exhibition? The fact is that it is a sport, as it is designed and defined by its rules etc, but the commentary makes it seem as if we're just watching free surfing, not a contest. I have never watched a heat and felt as if it's been properly explained how and why someone lost or won. Occasionally a surfer will come in and tell you that he lost the heat because he misused priority here

 or did something else wrong there, and you get some insight into what actually went down. Kelly is great at this. Most commentators don't like the fact that every heat is actually won by wave selection, the use of priority, and the management of time—by strategy, basically. Commentators almost deny the existence of strategy, and try and make us believe heats are won by just surfing. My experience is that heats are less often won by surfing, and more often won by strategy, and this is what actually makes it interesting. We already know about surfing. It's the rest of it that needs to be illuminated in order to keep an audience interested and engaged.

Just two things to add. First, by putting more emphasis on tactics and strategy—by leaning into the gamesmanship, really understanding it, having fun with it—the pressure is off, just a bit anyway, in terms of wave quality. To rephrase what Lynch is saying. A WCT event is not surfing as you experience it during a pre-work session or on a surf trip. It is a sport. A much better sport when the waves are good, yes, but interesting enough in lesser surf 

 all the feints and ploys and hustles and stratagems are understood and highlighted.

And second: can somebody please get a petition going, or a crowdfunding campaign, or a Papal decree, whatever, to get Barton in the booth?

TALKING POINT: BARTON LYNCH

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