The first interview, below, is excerpted from "Maturing Like an Artist," written by Drew Kampion and published in the May 1969 issue of SURFER, just a few months after Doyle won the '68 Duke Invitational at age 28. The second interview, opening on the topic of on Doyle's new but ill-fated "single-ski" invention, is taken from "A Conversation with Mike Doyle," by Doug Fiske, which ran in the November 1970 issue of Surfing.

You were considered to be one of the best surfers in the world a few years ago, then seemed to drop out of the scene a bit. Then last year [1968] you were California's best international competitor. How do you explain the comeback?

As far as dropping out of the picture, I never did drop out of surfing. I always surfed, but I more or less stayed right in this area [Encinitas], and went to all the contests here in California, most of which had pretty small surf. I do better in larger waves. I just took a rest but kept surfing and working on board designs. I wasn’t trying to be the best surfer or the best competitor or anything. I just relaxed for a while. Then last year everybody said I was getting too old to keep up with the kids, so I wanted to see what would happen if I really tried one more time, for one year, and really studied my equipment, made the right boards, and even got down to eating the right foods and training and working out and trying to get in top physical shape. Could a person come back at my age? I mean, it’s never been done before. Up ’til now everyone quit competition at about 24 or 25, but I didn't see any reason why a person couldn’t go on and on. The more experience a surfer gets, and if he doesn’t get hung up in outside activities like work, I think if he stays close to it, he can just get better and better and mature like an artist or musician. This last year has been my best year in surfing. I’m getting more out of the sport than I ever have. And I did better in the competition this year than I’ve ever done.

Much has been said lately of the Australians and Hawaiians being the superior surfers in the world. Do you think California is now behind these other areas?

I think each area has its virtues. You take any 20 Californians and stack them against any 20 Hawaiians, and the Hawaiians are going to be much better in large waves. The Hawaiians work out big-wave principles, and design boards accordingly. So far as me winning [the '68 Duke], that was mostly just because I’d been to Hawaii so many years in a row that I can almost figure out their scene. I'm not exactly right on top of it, but I can get a pretty good idea from all my past experience. Meanwhile, the Australians are definitely ahead of us in areas, too. I would say the Australians, as far as being athletic and into performance, are ahead of everybody in the world. Except not in larger waves. But I think their basic principles of style, their body movements, are far superior to that of the Hawaiians or Californians. The Australian technique is the best for surfing, just like the French technique is best for skiing.

Are you planning on competing heavily this year?

I just got my WSA competition card in the mail. You know, I have a chance to go in another bracket—25 to 34. They call it the seniors. But I’m going to stay in the men’s division. It will be interesting to see if I can hold up for another year.

Do you think that the new move towards professionalism will improve the contest scene?

I’m all for the professional scene. I just feel that if you can make money doing what you like, it’s a good thing. You go in a contest and there’s money in it; I think that’s great. And as far as the TV audience goes, when they know money is involved, it adds more interest. People around the world are now aware of what we do. The surfing image has moved away from the bleached-blond gremmie on the beach, breaking windows and all that stuff. It has changed to a sport with international flair, and surfing has progressed in the eyes of the general public. People have a better attitude towards surfers now.

I like professionalism because it gives me something to work for. I can justify taking more time off to surf.

How is the professional thing set up to at the moment, and when would it be going into effect?

The whole thing is up in the air right now. We had a meeting in Hawaii last year where [promotor] Kimo McVay put in $1,000 and made the Duke the first professional contest. Going forward, it’s supposed to be a circuit where you have five or six or seven contests a year in different parts of the world, and you’d surf in waves that would have to be a specific size, usually over ten feet, and a TV crew would be there. First prize for each contest could be three or four or five thousand dollars. It’s not yet organized, and this is still in the future. But I can see where maybe we've started something because of the cash prize at the Duke, and also in Peru, and I’ve already heard talk that possibly this year’s Huntington contest might be professional. I think that’s the way it’s going to have to go.

Would you change anything about how the contests are organized?

They have to be smaller. Like at Huntington, you have four or five hundred competitors, and that's just mass confusion. For a professional thing, you invite just 20 pros. If the surf is good in the morning, you do the whole thing in a single day. In other words, make it a fantastic event in good waves, but get it done with. You don’t have to drag it on for days.

This is something which, I think, could change the whole sport as far as getting it in the Olympics, or just having getting surfing going all over the world. There’s already a wave machine in Japan, and they just broke ground for one in Arizona [Big Surf]. If they could make a good synthetic wave, I can see resorts all over the United States. The kind of thing where you've got a pool and waves and a hotel and a clubhouse. Surfing could reach a state like skiing. Older people could get involved. You come out of the water and take a shower and have a cocktail and go buy some after-surf clothes and the whole bit. There’d be nightlife and people could talk about their day and how many waves they caught. It would be especially good for all the surfers that are involved in surfing for a living. All these places are going to need instructors and pro shops. The whole surfing industry could just multiply.

"A conversation with Mike Doyle," excerpted below, was recorded one year after the above interview.

mutual friend of ours said that this is going to be your last interview. What does that mean?

It was kind of a flip-out statement. If this whole thing goes through, this project I'm working on, it will be my last job, and this will be my last interview.

I’m trying to create a whole new sport. I’m talking about the ski.

Does it mean you are going to drop out of surfing?

It doesn’t mean anything. I change my mind every ten minutes.

This is kind of pretty far out because I remembered where I got the idea just last week. It first came to me in a dream when I was 18 years old. The first time I went skiing I was in high school. I went up to Big Bear, and afterward I had a dream of where I was on one ski going down this hill, kind of half surfing, half skiing. I was banking off the hill, off these gullies. That was the first time I got it in my head to make the ski.

I forgot the whole thing when I started working for a [Hansen Surfboards] and getting paid. When the money is rolling in you lose a little creativity because you don't have to produce. I just surfed and relaxed and never had to think about what I had to do because I didn't have to do anything. So I forgot about the ski until this year in Jackson Hole where I was skiing and sleeping in my camper. I had another dream, and the whole thing came back to me.

Where did you build the first one and what did you make it out of?

I made it in the chicken shack in my backyard. I made it out of fiberglass the same way you lay up a fin panel but I had to get the curvature of a ski bottom. It had side camber, bottom camber, and bindings. It had to have the right flex. I had no idea how this thing was going to work, but it worked way beyond my expectations.

How did you determine what the length of the ski would be?

It's six feet long. Skis are really behind in evolution. They’re going thru trips that we went through on surfboards ten years ago. They are not progressing at all. Boots and bindings and all of that stuff are so far out, so far ahead because they are engineer’s trips. But skis themselves haven' really developed. You can’t run in and make a pair overnight and ski it the next day, the way you can with a surfboard. It takes a year to tool up. They haven’t really changed except in material since the old army skis. Basically, skis were originally used for walking. They weren’t used for Alpine; they were used to get from one place to another. Then some guy slid down a hill and said Wow! and from there it evolved into a sport.

You put both a pair of bindings side-by-side on a single ski. It seems like it would be more stable with both feet bound like that.

It is. Plus it's a lot safer because you don't have one leg slipping off in the other direction. It makes the whole thing simpler, going from two skis with four edges down to one ski with two edges. I started thinking of my ski and my body as one unit, so when I turned it was just an extension of my body.

Are there any disadvantages to not being able to spread your feet apart?

Yes, if going 60 miles an miles it might be better to spread your feet apart. But if you want to go up and groove around, and are more interested in carving, getting into wild patterns, being able to pull up and around a bump, you are better off with one ski.

Then you would anticipate this ski being used in the way that regular skis are?

I anticipate it completely taking over the powder market, almost all of it. I think you will be able to go down the very steepest powder runs that people haven’t even gone down because you can turn so tight. You can really float instead of having to fly down.

We made only the prototype, which was pretty crude, but it worked. Now we’re getting into a molding process with fiberglass ribs, special types of resins and unidirectional cloth. It’s getting into an engineering trip with [boardmaker] Bill Bahne. He's taking care of all that; I don’t know shit about that stuff.

Is anyone else aware of what you're working on?

Not the general public, no. This article ought to be the first to get everybody making copies

Let's go off in a different area. Tell me about the Duke contest.

They have gotten more commercial than ever. I don't know if I’ll go in the next one. I’ll do it if I happen to be there but I won’t make a special trip. It's really gotten commercial. [Note: Doyle was unable to defend his Duke title in 1969, placing 6th. Joey Cabell was the winner.]

This year there was a heavy dispute over who was invited and why certain people weren't. What was the story behind that?

There are only 20 guys invited each year, and there have to be at least 100 excellent surfers that should be in it, so everybody apart from the 20 invitees are going to complain and bitch.

What did you think of the contest's administration and validity?

I think Joey deserved to win, but otherwise the whole thing was horrible. The waves were so shitty. They said before we entered the water to just go out now, but don't worry about it, we’ll count the results to some extent, then we’ll wait till the waves come up later in the week and we’ll do it again. We'll put it on a percentage basis so that today will count a fraction of the total. So we went out and surfed. Then when we came in they said that was it. They didn't want to pay to have the TV crew hang around for another three days. It was costing them a lot of money and what they already had in the can would look good enough on television. [Meet director] Fred Van Dyke was at the mercy of the TV people. He was really pissed off. He just gave up; there was nothing he could do.

One of the Duke sponsors this year was a guy who wants to put a big hotel at Sunset Beach. I mean, what we're doing with the contest is actually just bringing people out to get them interested in buying land and investing on the North Shore. The whole trip is so commercial it’s ridiculous. The whole idea of the contest was to remember Duke Kahanamoku, but all that is gone. The contest now is not the way he'd like it.

Do you think the situation would ever get to a point where the surfers would refuse to do it?

No. There are too many egos in surfing. An awful lot of surfers are egotistic. They like to be in pictures and movies. Why should they care? If the first 20 surfers didn't come, they'll just find 20 other guys.

What are your feelings on contests in general and their future?

The whole contest trip is dying. Contests aren't fun, they're a hassle. You get pushed around, squeezed, demoralized, dehumanized. You turn into a puppet of whoever is running it.

Do you think that these problems will ever be resolved and contests will be worthwhile?

As soon as they dissolve contests all the problems will be resolved.

I’ve seen bellyboards lately that are made entirely out of plastic. They're four feet long, undingable and light. Regular surfboards are getting down to six feet long, and it's really easy to think of something made from plastic like those bellyboards. Something that would float better than foam. A hollow board could be really neat. I’ve ridden some of those new honeycomb boards. They’re so light and so buoyant; they work on top of the water.

What was your motivation for your recent trip to Japan and Australia?

I had been to Australia before and I wanted to go again. I’ve always had it in my head that it was a good place because it’s not too crowded. The Japan thing was just a way to go to Australia. I was kind of interested in Japan. There were waves there but they were slow and the water was dirty. So I went to Australia, then came back and went skiing for the winter. I found a lot of wilderness around Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and really got turned on to skiing, the mountains, the freedom of it.

Was this an escape from the police state?

Before I went to Australia I was going up and down the East Coast, peddling surfboards, trying to tell one kid that this is the board, man. But you know, Claude Codgen had been there the week before telling the same kid the same thing about 

 board, then Dewey Weber would be there two days later, and Corky Carroll left an hour ago. We were all doing the same thing. I mean, it was total brain damage.

Sure, that’s what I studied in school. I’m not going out protesting and carrying signs but I’m aware and concerned. I do what I can. Look at surfboard wax. There are that many bars going out every day; there are that many wrappers thrown on the beach. Where do all thousands of bars go? They go on guys’ boards and end up in the water. We are as bad as the rest of them.

I try to eat good food cooked as little as possible. At one time I was so far into the food thing that I was starting to feel superior to other people. They were all laggards. I would berate everybody on how sick they were and how healthy I was. I got so fanatical for awhile.

I’d like to see one-fourth the people surfing that are surfing now. California is getting almost intolerable, you have hassles everywhere. The best spots are all either really crowded or private so you can’t get to them. It's pretty hard to be living and surfing in California, it's hard to stay high on surfing.

Are there other places in the world where you can still do that?

Sure, but I’m a child of America. I’m used to having electricity, music, and all the books I want; having my head filled with other things besides surfing. These other areas that have the perfect waves don’t have the cultural stimulations. I’m not interested just in surfing It is still at my center. It more or less holds my spirit and my whole being together. It’s my relief, my outlet. But it has to be in balance with other things. I have to have more in my life because I'm growing in several ways, not just within surfing. Right now everybody wants to get away, to get out of California. They are people who haven't gotten away before. I've fulfilled that need many times. I’ve gotten away, then realized that there are too many things that I’m giving up. But I guess you have to decide for yourself. You have to know where your head is; you have to know if you're interested in other things, or if you’re just a surf freak.

[Photos: Ron Church, Ron Stoner, Art Brewer, Fletcher Manley, Brad Barrett]

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