The SURFER Profile

ALMOST NOT FAMOUS
Bobby Martinez Writes His Second Act

The road to fifth-ranked surfer in the world has been an arduous one for Bobby, filled with pressure from others and mistakes of his own making. Now that he's made it, however, he surfs with the knowledge that success can be taken from him at any time.

In that sense, at an early age, Bobby Martinez became of two worlds: his neighborhood friends and his life in Santa Barbara, and his life as one of the most promising surfers in the world.

And yet, Bobby was still just a kid from the street, at least around where he grew up. As he was winning amateur titles and scoring paychecks and free boxes of clothes, life was taking perhaps an inevitable turn for many of his friends back home. They fell into gangs or drugs or bad s--t.

Bobby was stuck somewhere between the two worlds. He began to smoke pot. Lots of it. At first it was fun, but as the years went on and Bobby graduated from the amateur ranks—both of surfing and of pot smoking—it became more than that.

“That was just my thing,” he says. “I just smoked a lot. I took it with me everywhere. I’d tape it to my nuts on planes and I always had to have it. It was like a security thing or whatever, where if I had it, then I knew I would be okay wherever I went.”

At 18, when Bobby first went off on the WQS, he was expected to make the WCT in one year, maybe two. He was that good. And anyway, some of his contemporaries had done it. C.J. Hobgood did it in two years, then won a world title two years after that. Andy Irons, four years older, who also had dominated in the NSSA, made it in three years.

It was what Bobby was destined for. But it didn’t happen. He signed a big contract, made a lot of money. Bought a BMW and took some s--t from people who said that kids shouldn’t be making that much money and Bobby was the perfect example of somebody given too much too soon. Bobby’s response? They don’t know me. Maybe a little bit deeper inside: F--k ’em.

He continued to smoke a lot of pot. In 2000, his first full year on the WQS, he finished 90th. His second, he finished 53rd. Not bad, but with as much talent as Bobby had, and getting paid as much as he was, a lot was expected of him. He got a reputation, fair or not: He just wanted to blaze and hang out in the same old Santa Barbara barrio. The people paying him began to sense that smoking and hanging out were more important than the tour, and they began to push him, perhaps laying the foundation for Bobby’s distaste for the industry. His third year, he broke his collarbone and was out for the season. Many saw that as the end. He wasn’t going to make it. He wasn’t going to do anything. He was 20 years old and filled with unrealized potential.

People wrote about him in magazines. His youthful indiscretions played out as editorial fodder and reading material to hundreds of thousands, millions. He smoked more weed. He was high all the time. It was his crutch. He was a cautionary tale. Guy with all the talent in the world, who wasn’t willing to use it.

It had gone too far. He had let it go too far. He kicked weed. In 2003, he swore off it for good. He was going to make do on his talent. He was going to make the WCT. He recovered from his injury. It nearly worked. He nearly made the WCT. He finished 28th on the WQS. Close, but not enough.

In 2003, he felt like he had his s--t together on tour. In 2004, he felt about as solid as he’d ever felt, personally and professionally. He just couldn’t make the tour. He tried like hell. It just wasn’t happening. He finished 69th.

“You know, if people want to say that I quit smoking and got my head screwed on straight and went out and made the tour right away,” he says, “it just didn’t happen like that. The truth is, I felt I had my head screwed on straight for a couple years there, I was trying as hard as I could, and I just couldn’t make the tour. That’s the truth.”