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Kelly & Me

^{Sarah Saunders | DECEMBER 2008 / JANUARY 2009}

Veteran surf journalist, Phil Jarratt, was personally picked by world champion, Kelly Slater, to help write his autobiography. But as Sarah Saunders discovers, Phil has some yarns of his own.

You’ll be surprised who you’ll meet in the line-up of longboarders at Noosa’s First Point this summer.

Holding court most days in the gentle peel of “old guy waves” that round the Queensland beach town’s rocky headland is Phil Jarratt, co-author of Kelly Slater’s new book.

If you were reading surf magazines in the early 1970s, Phil’s name, as a former editor of Australian surfing bible, Tracks, may just ring a bell.

Three decades later he’s come a long way. From Tracks he landed the dream job of roving correspondent for the world’s leading surf magazine, Surfer, published out of the United States.

He also worked for fledgling companies, Quicksilver and Rip Curl, now two of the surf industry’s three global giants.

It was during those years that Phil formed a lifelong friendship with 1960s champion surfer and Quicksilver founder, Jeff Hackman. After founding his surf company, Hackman, battling a heroin addiction, dropped off the scene. Phil wrote a book about him, Mr Sunset, which was later made into a film.

Ask this Wollongong boy how he did it, how he managed to break into one of the most glamourous and competitive industries in the world, and Phil’s modest.

“Through the back door,” he says. “I realized pretty early that I didn’t have the natural talent to go very far from the athletic standpoint of surfing, so I started contributing to surfing magazines in Australia and overseas until I’d developed a bit of a name for myself”.

More recently Jarratt has just come off a ten year stint as head of Quicksilver Europe, Slater’s major sponsor throughout the 1990s. It was during those years that Phil got to know the seven time world champion.

If you don’t know surfing, it’s here that I must explain the “Kelly phenomenon”. Kelly Slater is a superstar who, by previous standards, at the ripe old age of 36, should have retired years ago. Still he keeps winning. And still with those boyish good looks, unmatched natural talent and an unnerving quietness, he commands crowds of thousands, regardless of nationality or experience, to silently surge forward each time he takes to the water.

He is, as Jarratt describes: “The ultimate comic book surf hero for kids”.

Despite spending quite a bit of time together during the decade of Kelly’s ascent, theirs was, according to Jarratt, a rather strained relationship.

“We’d travel around and do media stuff but I was the guy who had to drag him away from the things that he liked, to attend press conferences, trade shows and official engagements”.

The friction was such that when Slater handpicked to him to co-write Kelly Slater for the Love, Phil was pleasantly surprised.

Working closely together for the past couple of years they’ve come to know and appreciate each other much better.

So, the question I’m itching to ask is: What’s Kelly really like?

“Oh, he’s a bastard!” Jarratt laughs. “No, seriously he can be but most people with extraordinary gifts can be a little temperamental. Kelly’s certainly one of those but overall he’s a very fine person.

“He’s got the mental strength of most big time champions – people like Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong. But the other side to Kelly is that he’s an extraordinarily sensitive kind of guy. His interests range from golf to conspiracy theories. He’s a late night internet browser and he really gets into some weird stuff but weird in a nice way”.

Book done, Quicksilver days behind him, Phil is finally back home in Noosa. He and wife, Jackie, have opened a surf store that sports a gallery of treasures collected from as far afield as Mexico, Hawaii, Sumatra and France.

Their timing couldn’t be better.

With big surf company profits rapidly vanishing in the global financial crisis, Phil believes the sport is in for a shake-up.

“The surf companies aren’t looking all that flash right now, particularly Quicksilver which has all kinds of borrowing issues. Until a year ago a whole generation of executives had grown up thinking every year got 10 percent bigger. It wasn’t a question of Does my salary go up or down but How much does it go up.

“We’re going to see some restructuring of the big surf companies and new, creative takes on marketing on much reduced budgets. I also think the international world tour that currently consists of eleven major surfing events, each costing more that $US2 million to stage, will become smaller”.

Ironically, the shake-up may be an opportunity for the billion dollar surf industry to rediscover its soul with Phil predicting the emergence of funky, new little companies.

“We’re already seeing a few soulful smaller concerns starting to emerge, run by people who aren’t always looking ahead for the next big thing but plucking stuff out of the past”.

As for Phil, he’s out in the water more than ever before. Despite having the pick of the world’s exotic breaks he says he can’t go past his front door.

“First Point and Tea Tree Bay are both exceptional old guy waves - if I can use that expression. They’re not life threatening if you’ve got a crook back or a dicky knee or a hernia. You get to your feet on those beautiful clean Queensland waves and just go forever.”

Last week was particularly good. Jarratt’s old mate Jeff Hackman was in town.

“He’s completely over his drug issues, he’s just turned 60 and we surfed some good waves together”.

You’ll be surprised who you meet in the line-up.

Kelly Slater For The Love (Chronicle Books) by Kelly Slater and Phil Jarratt is available at all good bookstores RRP $44.95.

Phil Jarratt’s shop Back Beach Noosa is at Noosa Junction, Queensland www.backbeach.net.au