Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [121]
To Greg’s amazement, Baker replied, “You know what? Do what you’re gonna do.”
“That was it,” says Greg. “I basically had a license for creativity when I was eighteen years old—to go travel and surf where I wanted and make stories happen for the magazines. That’s when this big wave thing was taken to a whole new level.”
Two years later, in mid-2003, Greg and Rusty made their first journey to South Africa in an “endless winter” pursuit of cold-wave adrenaline. In Capetown, they made the acquaintance of a funny thirty-year-old maniac named Grant “Twiggy” Baker and his bawdy, beautiful girlfriend, Kate Lovemore.
During his formative years, Twiggy roamed the world with his father, Vincent, a rabid fisherman and professional golfer. He cultivated a love of heavy waves while cocooned in the sand-spitting barrels of his native Durban, a thousand miles north of Capetown. Then when Twig was seventeen, Vincent was stabbed to death in a carjacking. Even today, it’s not a subject he cares to broach, though it informs his surfing life. Kate says, “It’s just so heavy. I’ve said to him, after some of the things he’s done, some of the waves he’s ridden, ‘Don’t you wish your dad was here?’ He’ll just sort of brush the subject under the carpet.”
It took years for Twiggy to fully emerge from a fog of depression. When he did, he forged and tempered nerves of titanium at a lonely, white shark–infested hellhole that Capetown locals called Dungeons. The wave is basically a toothier, shiftier version of Maverick’s, fronted by a landscape equal parts Grand Canyon and Big Sur. He also surfed deep in South Africa’s desolate Transkei region. To keep from being torn to pieces he wore a great white–repelling “Shark Shield”—a battery-powered surfboard leash that delivers jolts of electricity into the surrounding water.
Greg and Rusty were quickly woven into Capetown’s tight-knit circle of Dungeon masters, and despite an age difference of ten years, Greg and Twiggy found they had the same goal, the same mindset—simply paddling and towing into the biggest damn waves they could find, no matter what, no matter when, no matter whether they could afford it. Greg would become Twiggy’s California connection, introducing him to guys like Parsons, Mark Renneker, Grant Washburn, Skindog, Peter Mel, and Jeff Clark.
“We started having such a blast, traveling the world for waves,” Twiggy says. “It was like, fuckin’ let’s go. We were spending eight months a year surfing. More time together than we were spending with our girlfriends.”
Kate laughs and nods. “That’s true.”
In June of 2003, the Red Bull Big Wave Africa went off in stellar, bonecrushing conditions. The twenty-year-old Californian won despite being the youngest invitee in contest history, while Twiggy finished fourth. For both, the contest marked the start of the most phenomenal run in the history of big wave surfing. A run due in no small part to their friendship.
“Twig and I, we just clicked,” says Greg. “We’ve always kind of had two different approaches, but they complemented each other. It’s like with my brother. People will say, well, you guys are brothers, you make perfect surfing and towsurfing partners. But no, our personalities really conflict. Rusty’s just supermellow, like, ‘Take it easy, Greg.’”
Yet, with Twiggy, Greg is the quieter one. Despite being younger, he’s more subdued, even if it’s a difference of degrees, not nature. With mock seriousness, Greg says, “Twig’s the yin to my yang. The peanut butter to my jelly.”
Today, Greg Long’s name already comes up when surfers argue over who deserves the title of best big wave rider in history. It’s a short list, and in recent years Long received the benediction of one of the few other surfers on it, his namesake Greg Noll. The two men, arguably the best big wave surfers of their generations, have become fast friends.
“I was an adrenaline junkie, a glassy-eyed bird dog when the surf came up,” Noll says. “And that’s