"They said you were too soft! Too pretty! Too scared! And they were…wrong …about… that, too. And they are truly sorry!"
The Illinois comedian Bill Murray, famous for his iconic roles as Tripper Harrison (Meatballs), Carl Spackler (Caddyshack), John Winger (Stripes) and Phil Connors (Groundhog Day) has delivered a beautiful living eulogy to his old friend, the surfer Kelly Slater.
Bill Murray, seventy-four, and Kelly Slater, fifty-three, have long tooled around together on golf courses, a passion they both share although it should be noted that Bill Murray has also dabbled in surf, notably at Bali’s Padang Padang, where he was pushed into waves by former Pipe Master Rory Russell and Grajagan in Java in 1980 where he sat out a writer’s strike in Hollywood by staying at Bill Boyum’s jungle tree house camp.
Slater has long expressed admiration for Bill Murray, notably in a 2018 Instagram post where he wrote, “Has anyone ever spent the day with #BillMurray and not smiled all day? A memorable day in my life,” alongside a photo of them together
On the occasion of Slater being given the Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award a few days back, it was Bill Murray whose monologue accompanied the award’s tribute video, the narration recorded in Charleston, South Carolina, where Murray has a home and which was recently named sixth happiest seaside town in America.
View this post on Instagram
Hey, grom! We saw you comin’ even when you were just a tiny kid back in Florida. And some said, you were going to the best… surfer…… in history. It turns out we were RIGHT ABOUT THAT! We were right. But they weren’t always SO KIND when you first arrived on tour. Some of them had doubts. They said you were too young, too weak, too FLICKY. They were… wrong… about that.
And when you came to Hawaii? To play with the big boys? They said you were too soft! Too pretty! Too scared! And they were…wrong …about… that too. And they are truly sorry! Truly sorry. And then you started winning. And winning. And winning again and again and again. And they said, i? They said, oh, it just came too easy, he’s going to get distracted, he’s not going to be able to keep up with the youngsters, oh that your body is going to fail you. That you just… don’t…have… the heart to keep on going. They were really wrong about all of that. And no apology is acceptable!
So now here you are, thirty three years and eleven world titles later the youngest WSL world champion ever and the oldest world champion ever. Not just the greatest surfer ever, but one of the greatest athletes of all time. still and maybe forever the face of the sport. Awwwww, what next grom?”
Yeah, what next, kid?