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Prodigiously gifted regularfoot surfer from Durban, South Africa; national champion in 1965, but better known as the country's original surfing counterculture figure, who spent decades living in the dunes and under the boardwalk at Jeffreys Bay. Van den Heuvel was beloved rebel to some, and a homeless drug casualty to others—although nobody denied his wave-riding talent. "Ant was the Prince of Cool," Durban-based surf photographer Pat Flanagan wrote. "One of South Africa's most gifted wave riders. Just before the advent of shortboards he was on another level, unpredictable and spontaneous, his noseriding, turns, and cutbacks were off-the-scale good."

Van den Heuvel was born (1944) and raised in Durban, the son of a fisherman, and began surfing in the early 1960s, informally mentored by boardmaker and Durban surfing original Max Wetteland. In 1964, when organizers sent word to South Africa that they would be allowed to nominate one surfer to represent the country in the first World Championships, to be held in Sydney—surfing competition had not yet been introduced in South Africa, so there was no national champion—it came down to Wetteland and van den Heuvel. "Max was a fantastic surfer with a Phil Edwards style," Durban boardmaker Harry Bold later recalled. "And then there was Ant, who was probably a little bit better than Max, but who we thought was a bit wild." Wetteland got the nod. 

Later in 1964, van den Heuvel won South Africa's first surfing contest, in Durban. At an inter-province meet, held that December near Cape Town, van den Heuvel was forced to withdraw midway through the finals, due to cramps caused by the cold water. 

Van den Heuvel at that point was a Durban lifeguard, and racing paddleboards, and in elder boardmaker John Whitmore's words, "was the fittest little guy you have ever seen." He was virtually unbeatable in domestic competition throughout 1965, and selected as one of three South African surfers to compete in the '65 World Championships, held in Lima, Peru. Van den Heuvel made the semifinals, and was runner-up in the two-kilometer paddle race. 

He returned to Peru in January, 1966, for another international surfing contest, and finished 3rd behind Midget Farrelly and Paul Strauch. From there he went  to the North Shore of Oahu for a long visit, then flew to California. Van den Heuvel did not compete in any South African contests that year—including the national titles—but he made the semifinals of the United States Surfing Championships, and was named the best South African surfer in the International Surfing Magazine Awards, which he hoped would qualify him for the South African team to the upcoming 1966 World Championships, in San Diego. It did not. As a consolation, however, team manager John Whitmore offered van den Heuvel a slot on the paddling team—if he cut his hair, which had grown halfway down the back of his neck. (Van den Heuvel also had a goatee, but so did Whitmore, so that was not an issue.) Van den Heuvel refused and was not allowed to paddle. "And that," van den Heuvel later said, "was the end of my surfing career."  

Van den Heuvel, who in 1964 was one of the first surfers to ride Jeffreys Bay, returned to the still-undeveloped pointbreak for three months in 1966, then set off on another year-long international journey that took him to France, New York, San Francisco (where his passport and surfboard were stolen), then finally back down to San Diego. It was here, during a weeks-long stay spent mostly in the company of Mike Hynson, Skip Frye, and David Nuuhiwa that van den Heuvel picked up a Hynson-shaped Gordon and Smith "red fin" model board, began smoking pot regularly, and in general making himself over—as Hynson had already done—into a consiously and proudly anti-establishment surfer. 

While hanging out in the Windansea parking lot, van den Heuvel said he was picked up by police during a Vietnam draft-dodger sweep, held in an El Centro jail for three months while his papers were slow-walked through the system, then deported back to South Africa. By early 1968, he was back in Jeffreys Bay, more or less for good.

Meanwhile, the comings and goings of Anthony van den Heuvel—who went by "Ant" or "Doc"—was of huge interest to surfers everywhere in South Africa, but particularly in Durban. As Mike Ginsberg, van den Heuvel's protogee and 1965 national juniors champ, later recalled: 

We were all very clean-cut conservative kids at that time in South Africa. So when we heard rumors that Doc was in California hanging out with Skip Frye and David Nuuhiwa and smoking pot, we couldn't belive it. We freaked out. Pot was not something we took lightly.

When Ginsberg and others heard that van den Heuvel had been detained and was being deported, they got together and planned an intervention as soon as their friend got off the plane. "He turned us all into potheads within three weeks," Ginsberg said. 

Van den Heuvel spent nearly all the remaining 35 years of his life on or near the point at Jeffreys Bay, in a tent, in an abandoned bus, under the boardwalk, or inside an enormous hollowed-out fynbos bush with a tarp roof. In the late 1960s and throughout the '70s, as more surfer-hippies began camping out at Jeffreys Bay, local Afrikaner farmers and police—by and large an anti-drug, apartheid-supporing, counterculture-despising group—made regular sweeps through the camps, and seemed to have a particular dislike for van den Heuvel, who was often arrested, jailed, and even beaten. No charges were ever filed.

Until 2000, van den Heuvel surfed alongside every great wave-rider who visited Jeffreys, from Terry Fitzgerald and Shaun Tomson, to Mark Occhilupo and Tom Curren, to Kelly Slater and Joel Parkinson.

Van den Heuvel supported himself by making Ugg-styled leather boots and fishing. He never outgrew his daily pot-smoking habit, and made no effort to hide the fact, but as Jeffreys became an international surf mecca, which in turn helped support a mostly-upscale local community, he became a cherished—or at least tolerated—local character. 

Van den Heuval died in 2003 of a heart attack, in his campsite, at age 59. 

Van Den Heuvel, Anthony

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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