"When I was on the tour, it was the Fosters ASP World Tour and the culture was about how good you could surf after how smashed you got."

Pro surfing fans were stunned, some good, some bad, this morn when the long-retired Australian pro surfer Nathan Hedge was given a start in the Outerknown Tahiti Pro, which begins at Teahupoo on August 11. 

Hedge, who is forty-three and an ambassador for the Kelly Slater-founded brand Outerknown, is a former runner up in Tahiti and it ain’t out of the realms of possibilities that he could meet, and beat, his master in the event.

His golden years were the early 2000s, big lefts, Mundaka, Teahupoo, Cloudbreak, his specialities.

It’ll be Hedge’s first appearance in a WCT contest since 2014.

It’s a wild turnaround for the lil man, who threw himself into rehab with the same gusto, after hitting the bottle a little hard on tour.

As he explained in an interview in SW a while back, 

“When I was on the tour, it was the Fosters ASP World Tour, and at every town it was that town’s week to shine. If you wanted to party you could party every week, all year. You can duck and weave and fly to the next spot and leave that all behind and start afresh at a new place, but it’s a crazy existence. The culture was about how good you could surf after how smashed you got. That’s how it was, last man standing. It was fun for ten-15 years but I wasn’t surfing as much. I was always hungover, missing surfs, and it didn’t do me any favours during those close heats. In the end, that lifestyle took me away from surfing. A part of me wants to talk to kids about this, but I had to do a lot of growing up by going hard and just putting myself out there. In the end, I think they’ve got to work it out for themselves, You’ve got to let them go on trips, dig themselves out of some holes and come through the other side, but at what point do you pull them up? To make five years clean and sober, I did a full live in rehab for six months. That’s the dedication it took. When they didn’t allow me to surf, it was really to get myself right. Eventually you get day leave. But the whole process took me out for six months. That was my third attempt, and it finally brought me back to surfing. It’s like having an injury you can’t see – you need to address what’s going on, take the time to recover. Being male and Australian, people think it’s a weak mentality to ask for help, but there’s help if you want it, and it’ll only happen when you get the balls to put your hand up. I started asking questions after I saw what Tommy Carroll went through. It was obvious that something had changed in him.”

Response from fans was mixed,

“Legend, but is it 2004 again?” was typical of the responses.

“We believe that life is God-ordained and God is the author and finisher of every life. No matter if at the beginning or at the end."

Give and inch and they’ll take a mile or so the old proverb goes.

It ain’t a secret that the pretty surf town of San Clemente, home to the cream of American surfing, including Kolohe Andino and Griffin Colapinto as well as “cool mom that will let everyone drink at the house as long as no one’s driving” Matt Biolos, leans to the right politically. 

It’s changing, howevs. 

In 1980, over seventy percent of its residents voted Republican, plunging to fifty-three in the Trump-Biden showdown two years go. 

Still, the joint is redder than most. 

And, ever since Roe v Wade got iced, giving states the right to allow, or more pointedly, disallow, abortions, San Clemente’s pro-lifers have come out swinging. 

In a resolution set to be debated on August 16, Councilman Steven Knoblock, yeah ironic, writes in part, “We believe that life is God-ordained and God is the author and finisher of every life. No matter if at the beginning or at the end. We stand in agreement that, as a City Council, we will protect and sustain life at every stage.” 

Knoblock wants the City Counsel to “considers life to begin at conception” and to push back against Planned Parenthood health centres or anywhere the unborn are killed. 

Per the LA Times, “There probably isn’t a family in America that hasn’t been impacted by abortion,” Knoblock said. “The [resolution] will get people thinking about what society has been doing for 50 years.”

San Clemente’s mayor Gene Walsh, also red, said he was “appalled” by the resolution, “It appears to me to be a document that could have been written by a Taliban tribunal, and I’ll say that as a conservative, pro-life Republican.”

Still, the mayor says “there is no issue that’s more important to me than protecting the unborn”.

The resolution, even if passed, is mostly symbolic.

“The fact is, California is a state where abortion is legal and there’s nothing the San Clemente City Council can do about that regardless of whether we are pro-life or pro-choice,” said Walsh.

Knoblock’s retort is that the rez is necessary ’cause it puts pressure on the state to change the law.

“The cities and counties in the state are part of that process,” Knoblock said. “I just wanted our voice to be heard from San Clemente.”