END DAYS

AS IT TURNS OUT, THIS VIRUS WASN’T JUST DEADLY TO HUMAN BEINGS – IT WAS DEADLY TO PROFESSIONAL SURFING.

Back in April, the world was a simpler place. We only had to deal with a pandemic and a few corona cops – not the breakdown of social order, the upending of world geopolitics, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Since the lockdown’s been lifted, however, at least we’ve had surfing. With many liberated from employment or school and free to hit the beach, surfers around the world have been able to paddle out at their local break and wash it off. As the world went mad, the people went surfing. It was a splendid, simple spell, with the experience rendered down to its elemental parts – surf, surfer, surfboard. The worse things got, the more essential surfing became.

Less essential, it seems, was a world surfing tour. This was the first year in 45 that the Tour didn’t run. As it turns out, this virus wasn’t just deadly to human beings – it was deadly to professional surfing. The Corona Open on the Gold Coast, scheduled for March, was the first event cancelled by the coronavirus. The Tour has been on a ventilator since then. You could not have engineered a more fatal condition for the sport: not only were borders closed, not only did the global economy tank, but there was something deeper happening among the surfing masses. It was a shift in attitude. They were too busy surfing to even notice the Tour was gone. The whole idea seemed to belong to another time entirely.

It was 1970 when Ian Cairns hitched a ride to the World Contest at Bells Beach. In the car headed south from Sydney was a cosmopolitan crew –