The Best American Sports Writing 2011 (6 page)

Clay entered his first contest at the age of five, and took home a trophy for finishing fourth. By seven, he'd joined the kiddie corps of local prodigies, sharing sleepovers, picnics, and family trips with Payne, Barger, and Larsen. "We were doing bigger, wilder stuff because we always had waves to play with," Clay recalls. "It's the Maui style: trying to top each other and look like we weren't even trying." There'd be half a dozen boys in the back of Jill's van, burping and farting the 15 miles to surf the North Shore breaks. "That was a magical time for Clay, the best years of his life," says Jill. "They were wonderful with him, really treated him like a brother, though even then they could see that he was different."

 

Clay's mother and father were divided over his odd behavior. Jill had long been flustered by the passel of tics that presented when Clay was four. "He made these weird faces and couldn't stop doing it," she says. "He was humming and flapping and pulling his hair, and was always just very intense and nervous when he wasn't in water." He staged shrieking tantrums if anyone touched the baseball cards or seashells he collected, and soothed himself by reciting lines from movies he'd learned by heart. He was uneasy wearing anything but the softest fabrics, was easily spooked by sudden noises, and for years allowed no one but Jill to hug him, pulling away from others. But his father refused to concede there was anything wrong. "He never really shared much or let you in, but I figured that was who Clay was," Gino says. "He was always a great athlete, and loved running around to the contests together, the two of us hanging out and having fun. If he had anything, I thought he'd outgrow it. Learn to finally look you in the eye."

In grade school, Clay was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and consigned to special ed. Jill tried him on Ritalin, but the drug exacerbated his moods and fits, made him a "kicking, screaming monster." Gino, meanwhile, derided the label. "He didn't need drugs," he says. "He needed to mind his teacher and stop drawing waves in his pad." By then, Clay's obsession with all things surfing completely filled the screen. No matter the assignment, each paper he wrote had to do with surfing. At night, he'd watch the tapes that Jill shot of his rides and study himself frame by frame. Then he'd go to bed and surf in his dreams: she would find him moving around but fast asleep, yelling, "Get off of my wave!" "You didn't want to wake him from one of those dreams," she recalls. "He could be violent in that state."

While Clay's schoolwork suffered, his surfing flourished. As a 10-year-old, he would fly long hours to competitions in California, where he would routinely whip the country's best 13-and-unders. If you're raised in Hawaii and can surf rings around older kids, you'll pop up pretty early on the radar of companies that make board-shorts and energy drinks. "I saw Clay for the first time when he was 10, and offered him a contract on the spot," says John Oda, the surf-team manager for Spy Optic eye-wear, which designs sunglasses for action sports. "He had so much speed and took such big risks that I knew, even then, that he'd be a star." By middle school, Clay had a deal with Quiksilver, and he was winning so many trophies that his parents had to cram them in the garage. Gino chauffeured him to meets and fussed over his gear and sponsor decals, making sure they were splashed on his boards. (Clay didn't like the stickers, which only served to draw unwanted attention to him.)

At 14—the year before his biggest triumph, the men's open title at the national finals—Clay sent a three-minute tape of himself surfing to Strider Wasilewski at Quiksilver. Wasilewski, who was then the team manager for Slater and several of the world's top pros, screened the loop in something like drop-jawed awe. "I'd never seen anyone near that young be so tuned in to the wave," he recalls. "His mechanics, his flow were comparable to Slater's, but Slater in his 20s, not teens. I thought, 'Holy shit, the world
has
to see this. We've got to book him onto the
Young Guns II
trip.'"

The
Young Guns
series of DVDs was a breakout marketing tool, showing off Quiksilver's future stars in exotic surf locales. Clay boarded an enormous yacht in Indonesia, where Slater and a film crew were shooting a handpicked group of the sport's best up-and-comers. Pitted against phenoms like Ry Craike and Julian Wilson, Clay astonished the pros with his flying-fish maneuvers, surfing the barrels with such command that he'd slow himself down to prolong his ride. For Slater, arguably the best surfer who has ever lived, it was a kind of a Clapton-meets-Hendrix moment, the jolt of newfound genius. "I didn't know anything about him, but he blew my mind," Slater recalled later. "I don't get intimidated by 15-year-olds often, but he was charging every wave, throwing the biggest, craziest reverses. He knows things about surfing that I don't."

The video that emerged moved a million units as a promo in surfing mags, and introduced Clay to a global public of preteen surfers. Soon, he appeared in a slew of new titles, signed six-figure deals with Quiksilver and others, and was trailed by groupies at media events, a sex symbol before his first girlfriend. "I'd be with him on a beach, just hanging out surfing, and suddenly all these kids would chase him down," says Klevin. "That really freaked him out and made it less fun, being in the bull's-eye of all these strangers." Whisked to late-night parties by sponsors' reps and roused for morning meet-and-greets and in-store signings, he began hiding out in foreign hotel rooms to avoid the stares and pleas of fans downstairs. "As a kid, he'd dreamt of going on trips with his heroes like Kelly," says Gino. "But suddenly, he was with them every week, in Tahiti one day, Australia the next, and he got sick of it pretty fast."

To earn his keep from the sponsors who pay him, a top rider lives out of a duffel bag, constantly jetting to end-of-the-world beaches for four-day "surf adventures." There he is shot, like the product he is, for photo spreads, online clips, and DVDs, all the while supplying punchy quotes about the "bombing reefs in Malaysia." He's also expected to pile up points on the tour circuit, flying to contests in Europe or Asia on weeks when he's not doing junkets. Finally, there are trade shows and promo tours and media events to do, a teeth-grind gamut of jostling cameras and sensory overload. It all so unstrung Clay that he eventually shut down, hiding behind headphones with the volume cranked, a mute, sullen kid who kept apart. His surfing cratered on the junior tour, he staged sudden ailments to get out of trips, and wouldn't leave his hotel bed when it was time to surf a heat. "All the guys were talking about this crazy kid, saying he's Pigpen in
Peanuts,
" recalls Jamie Tierney, a senior Quiksilver producer who befriended Clay. "He'd lose his wallet and cell phone, and he'd lay down on the floor after he got done eating, rapping to himself over his iPod. It wasn't, let's just say, the greatest entrance."

One of his sponsors dumped him for odd behavior, and Clay came within a lash of losing Quiksilver, by far his biggest backer. Interviewed once during a promo for his sponsor's line of goods, he was asked how the board-shorts felt. "They should be a little longer, maybe with better material too. And I don't like the color," he said. "Why—do you want me to like them?"

 

Several days after the monster storm that raised 50-footers off the coast, I arrange to meet Marzo at a forbidding break on the far west shore of Maui. A rock beach hidden from highway views by a copse of Cook pines and palms, it's reachable only by a bonejarring track down the side slope of a cliff. At the bottom, several hard-boys in the beds of pickups have their feet up, smoking a fattie. The surf is mush, dreary three-footers that crumble like stale saltines, and the place has the last-dregs air of a keg party gone too long. Marzo and his girlfriend, Alicia Yamada, are slouched in the cab of her truck, hoping for an offshore breeze to kick up bigger waves. "Surf's beady," he yawns through the rolled-down window. "Barely worth getting out of bed."

"No biggie," says Yamada, nut-brown and pretty, with hair almost down to her waist. "You've surfed worse than this, so what the hell. Go out there and rip it up."

They're a curious pair. She: short, dark, and dazzling. He: tall, impassive, and half-present. Though Yamada won't discuss it, I've heard from others that Marzo can be a difficult mate. He grabs food from her without thinking to ask, gets jealous when she talks to friends, and used to say vicious things if he didn't get his way. "She's a tough cookie and doesn't take shit, but I worry 'cause they're together noon and night," says Jill. "Clay's real possessive, and they're both so young. The good news is they're in couples counseling now."

They met four years ago, when he surfed with her brothers and was shy to the point of anguish around her. But they were thrown together enough that a friendship developed, and by 16 and 18 (she's two years older) a fumbling romance began. This caused a lot of grousing in the Marzo household: Gino, suspicious of Alicia's motives, resented her frequent visits to Clay, particularly when she slept in his room. "Here's my son, with no experience in life but earning lots of money from sponsors, and she comes around with no job or cash, making herself right at home," he says. "Next thing I know, he stops going on trips or wanting to compete. They won't keep paying you if you won't leave Maui, no matter
how
great you surf." There were constant battles at the dinner table, where he hectored Clay to be like his old Maui buddies, who traveled full-time to earn points and exposure on the junior circuit. Jill pushed back on Clay's behalf, saying he couldn't handle the punitive schedule of the typical top-shelf surfer. The fights so upset Clay that he'd flee upstairs or hide in the yard with his dogs. After a while, he stopped coming home altogether, staying with Alicia for days or weeks in the condo Jill had bought him with his earnings. Sides were drawn, and the siblings dragged in. Cheyne, the oldest, turned on Clay and accused him of hyping his ailment. Their younger sister, Gina, who's now 12, aligned with Jill and eventually stopped speaking to Gino. Last summer the couple split, after 21 years of marriage. Clay has no contact with Cheyne, whom he still reveres, and barely speaks to his father.

It takes more cajoling, but Marzo gets out of the truck; per usual, he's wearing just his trunks. Staring past the jetty to where the small sets form, his emerald eyes gain light and lose it, tracking currents the way a cat tracks birds. He's perfectly built for surfing: tall and broad-shouldered, with long, muscular arms to paddle hard, and short, rubbery legs that hold their line in the heaviest conditions. He's also strong in slop, carving whiplash turns in the flume of blah three-footers, but bored and saddened by the sight of them. Come summer, when the offshore winds die down and the surf here becomes a rumor, Marzo slides into a deep funk, moping on the couch with his laptop out, eyeing the conditions in Peru. "I'm eggy," he says now, Clay-speak for "vexed." "I checked the swell charts. It was s'posed to
go off.
"

There's a small group gathered on this rutted slope that overlooks the ocean: Tierney, who's visiting from California and who, two years ago, made
Just Add Water,
a wise and affectionate documentary about Marzo and his condition; Klevin, on hand to film Clay's rides; and Yamada and her father, a surf-battered man who claims to have ridden 40-footers. They gently coax Marzo to ride for an hour, but he stalls them, eyeing the tide. The prospect of being watched by even five admirers is enough to make him want to get back in the truck and go hide out in his room. His panic ratchets tenfold at tournaments, where he's still so pained by the crowd noise and cameras that he recently blew his chance to win the World Junior title by showing up late to his own heat. Nor is fear the only thing holding him back. In contests, he's incapable of playing it safe, going for broke on each wave. Time and again he has coughed up leads by failing to land an inverted blowtail when a modest, two-turn ride would seal the win. "Strategy's a huge part of contest surfing, which is how the hack guys earn their living, doing the same move over and over," says Tierney. "Clay can't do that, or says he can't. Me, I think he could if it really mattered."

Tierney, the son of two psychologists, seems to have a feel for handling Marzo. "C'mon, dude," he tweaks him. "I came all the way from SoCal. Show me how you surf this right-hand trash."

A half-smile tugs the corner of Marzo's mouth. "Even you could do it today," he murmurs.

"Well, let's go, then," says Tierney. "I brought my board along. Meet you where the dry rock sticks out."

Marzo hefts his six-foot Super and starts down the path to the shore, bumbling over roots, barefoot. To the consternation of his parents and backers, Marzo often responds to anxiety by getting stoned. It seems to brace his moods, which can reel on a dime, and allays the jitters that overtake him when he heads out into the world. As a maintenance drug, though, pot has its limitations. Marzo has ducked so many trips and promo junkets that he almost lost his meal ticket in 2008. "All the suits were on me hard to get rid of him, saying, 'He's a stuck-up, pot-smoking slacker,'" recalls Quiksilver's Wasilewski. "But I knew he was special, a once-i n-a-lifetime talent who needed understanding and hope."

To save Marzo's career, Wasilewski pushed his parents to have him examined for autism. Jill, who had already put him through years of tests for everything from learning disabilities to depression, was loath to subject him to more doctors. After months of prodding, though, she accompanied Clay to California for a week of tests by autism specialists. In waiting rooms full of three-year-old boys who flapped their arms and wailed, she knew the truth before the findings came. "I went online to look Asperger's up and cried and cried, saying, 'That's Clay,'" she says. "The years we let pass, the push to do the contests—it all just hit me really hard. I thought from now on, it's only about him being happy. Whatever he wants to do, that's what we'll do."

"Clay drew comfort from the diagnosis," says Mitch Varnes, his manager. "It turned off the heat to finally know the facts and also took the heat off from his sponsors. They said, 'Forget doing promos and the junior tour—just go surf and have fun.' He still wound up in tons of films and mags, but on his terms, not theirs."