Surfing on home turf

Brett Simpson probably didn’t receive the reaction he expected when he told his father what he wanted to do with his life.

“I grew up playing traditional sports and when I started surfing, he said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” said Simpson, who first hit the waves when he was 12. “I was like, ‘Guys are making careers out of it.’ . . . I just really had the passion for surfing. Once I started doing it, it was like I would be down there [at Huntington Beach] twice a day.”

Who could blame Simpson’s father, Bill, for being surprised at his son’s news? Simpson’s father played as a defensive back for the then-Los Angeles Rams in the 1970s.

A few years after Simpson stopped playing basketball and football to concentrate on surfing, Bill Simpson said he would receive phone calls from coaches asking if his son would ever stop riding waves.

At 24, he’s still ripping. On Sunday, he reached a high point of his career, achieving a dream that read like a storybook fairy tale.

The Huntington Beach native won the men’s championship at the Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing in front of his hometown crowd. He also earned a record prize money reward of $100,000.

“I’ve been watching this [event] since I was 12,” Brett Simpson said. “It was always my goal in the back of my mind to win it. It’s nice to be on top with the prize money being the most, $100,000.”

It all seemed too good be true. He became the first from Huntington Beach to win the Open. It was the 50th year of the competition and the 100th anniversary of Surf City. The Open also attracted record crowds. About 150,000 fans were on hand for Simpson’s victory against former world champ Mick Fanning of Australia in the men’s final.

Simpson came out strong, determined to win in front of his community. With a 360-degree aerial move, Simpson put himself out in front, scoring a 9.1 on a set. Fanning could never match it. He finished with 12.50, well behind Simpson’s 16.93.

“Surreal,” Bill Simpson said of watching his son win the Open. “It was almost like it was an out-of-body experience. You really couldn’t believe that it was happening. You thought about it for so long, you know he’s worked so hard, and when it was actually happening, you’re just kind of checking yourself, ‘Is this really going on? Am I going to wake up in a second?’”

Bill Simpson also said he noticed his son’s high level of concentration before the men’s final, and on the waves, it showed.

“He was just shot out of a gun on those first waves,” Bill Simpson said of his son. “When he’s doing that, he’s tough to beat.”

After the championship performance, and after posing with an oversized check and trophy, Brett Simpson acknowledged that surfing on his home break was an advantage. Growing up, he would surf at Huntington Beach daily, mostly twice a day.

It all started when he was 12. A neighbor took the young Simpson surfing and he got hooked. Later, for Christmas, he asked his father for a surfboard.

Bill Simpson gave in.

“I took him down to Seal Beach at the little jetty, and he was up on the surfboard in a second,” Bill Simpson said. “The rest was history.”

Brett Simpson eventually made his way toward Huntington Beach, and then the sponsors came. Now he’s one of Hurley’s top commodities in its stable of surfers.

He has his own blog, which now has video from his epic win Sunday. A documentary of him is reportedly in the works.

As one of the top surfers on the World Qualifying Series, he’s been on the cover of surfing magazines, voted as a top surfer or one to watch by several media outlets.

Sunday was his time to shine, but he’s still hoping to qualify for the World Championship Tour, the major league for professional surfers. After winning the Open, he shot up from eighth to fifth on the WQS rankings. He needs to be in the top 15 when he finishes the season in December to start out on the WCT in February.

The Open championship certainly provided confidence. It came against the world’s greatest surfers. Pat O’Connell, a Hall of Fame surfer who is vice president of sports marketing for Hurley, said there were surfers competing at the Open who had 20 world titles among them, including Kelly Slater, a nine-time world champion.

“That’s pretty amazing,” O’Connell said. “[Simpson] beat the best of the best. That right there is just a testament to how he surfs.”

It was a wild week at the Open. Slater fell in an upset in the quarterfinals. Surfers went up against large swells and endured low waves during the week. Brett Simpson needed a big win to get into the quarterfinals Saturday. With less than a minute remaining in his heat, Simpson scored an 8.1 on a wave to edge Matt Wilkinson, 14.93-13.5.

“Every time I got tired, the energy level would go up because of everybody cheering for me,” Simpson said.

Simpson defeated defending champ Nathaniel Curran in the quarterfinals. He then beat C.J. Hobgood in the semifinals.

“I felt this was my chance. You don’t get a lot of chances,” he said. “It’s the highest prize money ever, and to win it’s a dream come true.”