It Was No Day at the Beach

Kelly Slater glanced down at the dead kangaroo, then back to his mangled rental car. Then came a second impact, one that further dented his spirit.

It was April of last year and Slater, a former six-time world surfing champion from Florida, was making his return to the World Championship Tour after ending a three-year semi-retirement.

He was off to a bad start.

Slater was driving down a rural Australian highway in a cold rain, heading to the final day of the Rip Curl Pro near Bells Beach, the second tour stop of the season. His eyes weren’t on the road as his mind wandered.

“There were things in my life that weren’t going well,” said Slater, who is scheduled today to make his first appearance at the U.S. Open of Surfing in three years in Huntington Beach. “I did feel like it was a sign of things to come.”

Slater decided it was time to pay more attention to those closest to him, whether it was a wayward marsupial or his immediate family.

He strengthened bonds with his mother, two brothers and 7-year-old daughter. It was then that his life and career began to feel less tangled and more focused. Three weeks later, he earned his first WCT victory in three years.

By last fall, he was back atop the world rankings and was runner-up to Andy Irons by season’s end. It didn’t really matter to Slater that it was his first runner-up finish on the WCT. He felt closer than ever to his family and was equally happy to be plying his craft.

“I just love competing,” said Slater, 32, who is again ranked No. 2 in the world behind Irons. “That’s the No. 1 thing.”

Though he says he feels like an “outsider” among tour members, he has made considerable strides opening up to others. Once considered one of the hardest-to-get interviews in sports -- Sports Illustrated gave up trying to find him a couple years ago at a Huntington Beach event -- Slater released an autobiography last year entitled, “Pipe Dreams.”

In the book, he acknowledged for the first time that he was a single father. He also detailed, among other things, life with an alcoholic father and abusive stepfather, his relationship with “Baywatch” actress Pamela Anderson and the embarrassment he felt from his own role on the show.

Slater said he initially declined the book offer, then changed his mind when he began to realize the amount of demand. Even though some of the book details went against his ultra-clean public image, he found the response satisfying. A young woman recently approached him and described how the book reminded her of her own life.

“There was something very refreshing in that,” he said. “I think for a long time it seemed like I did have everything, like I did live in a perfect world.

“I had the world titles, the money, all these things, but there was never any down side, nothing negative. I didn’t always feel that way. I felt entirely different at times.”

Slater’s name hit the radar almost 20 years ago when he was a young phenom in Cocoa Beach, Fla., but his ability to tackle big waves was a constant question mark, even for himself.

He answered the questions in 1992, when he won the WCT title in his first year on tour, becoming the first to accomplish that feat.

He went on to win an unprecedented five consecutive titles between 1994 and ’98 and cemented his reputation as the greatest professional surfer of all time. After accumulating a small fortune, Slater ventured into semi-retirement in 1999, appearing at only a handful of selected events.

But his ties to the sport remained strong. He continued a lucrative relationship with surf industry giant Quiksilver and it was at his sponsor’s request, Slater said, that he returned to the WCT as a wild-card entrant for the 2002 season.

“I didn’t go totally willingly,” he said. “I spent that first year on the tour essentially showing everybody that I wanted the year off.”

Slater still finished ninth in 2002, a year that also marked the death of his father. He returned in 2003 with another ninth-place finish in a season-opening Gold Coast event in Australia.

Then came his collision with the kangaroo.

Slater blamed the accident on his own inattentiveness, mainly caused by jumbled, faraway thoughts. He had not been the closest son, brother or father during his rise as a pro, saying he once went three years without contacting his daughter.

His fellow competitors didn’t see the determination that marked Slater’s stretch of titles.

“He would never put up a fight,” said Pat O’Connell of Laguna Beach, who began competing on the WCT in 1995.

No sooner did he begin reaching out to his family than he won his first contest in three years. The victory in Tahiti was a major morale booster. Not only did he end a victory drought, he did so after breaking two bones in his foot a day earlier when he wiped out while free surfing.

“That ended up being one of the most magical days of my life,” he said. “It just seemed like, once I fully committed to continuing in the event, nothing was going to go wrong.

“I had every ‘out’ I wanted. I could have said, ‘My foot hurts, I can’t compete.’ But that would have been a full cop-out.”

He won again in South Africa during the summer and by fall had moved back atop his perch as the top-ranked surfer in the world. An emotional loss to Irons in the final heat of the year in December at the Pipeline Masters -- on his father’s birthday -- dropped Slater to No. 2.

“With his results last year, the title would have been a walk in the park any other year,” O’Connell said. “But now Andy has that swagger.”

And he has his life in order.

*

O’Connell and Tim Reyes of Huntington Beach won heats to advance to today’s round of 32 at the U.S. Open.

Also advancing were former San Clemente residents Shane Beschen and Cory Lopez, two-time defending world champion Irons and former world champion Mark Occhilupo of Australia.

Among those eliminated in the round of 64 were former world champions Tom Curren of Ventura and Sunny Garcia of Hawaii.

*

U.S. Open of Surfing

* Where: Huntington Beach Pier

* When: Continues today and Sunday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

* Finals: Women at 12:45 p.m. today; men at 12:40 p.m. Sunday; longboard at 12:10 p.m. Sunday; juniors at 11:40 a.m. Sunday.