Since the inception of a world competitive tour 50 years ago, over forty surfers have laid claim to the title of “world champion”. It’s a stacked list, filled with legends like Kelly Slater, Andy Irons, Lisa Andersen, Tom Curren, Steph Gilmore, and more. And at the very tip top of this storied lineage is one Peter Townend, the very first to don the crown, and an Aussie trailblazer who, in the winter of 1976, etched his name into surfing history as the sport’s inaugural World Champion.

For those in need of a quick history refresher, Townend – better known as PT – hails from the Gold Coast, and in the mid-‘70s arrived on the North Shore alongside a talented crew of hungry surfers like Shaun Tomson, Mark Richards, Ian Cairns, and Wayne Bartholomew. Their collective dream of becoming pro surfers materialized during the 1975/76 winter, when PT’s performance in three events earned him the first-ever world title, marking the beginning of what we know pro surfing to be today.

This month, Townend – a.k.a PT – will be touring Southern California alongside Tomson, Rabbit, and Ian Cairns for the showing of “Bustin Down the Door”, a documentary film chronicling the Free Ride Generation and the movement that upended surfing’s then-status quo. Before the tour wrapped, we sat down with PT to talk about the winters of the ’70s, the dream of turning surfing into a profession, and what the future of surfing might look like.

Looking back 50 years on the winters of 75/76, has your perspective on that time changed at all over the years?

If you look back, it was the changing of the guard. There was a new crew coming through that really came into sight at the beginning of the 70s. Most of the crew that ended up being in North Shore in the middle of that decade were all in the 72 ISA World contest – the Australians, the South Africans, the Hawaiians, the Californians – but that contest went away. So there was a vacancy of international competition, except for what was happening on the North Shore – the Duke, the Pipeline Masters, the World Cup, and the Smirnoff. From a point of view of competitive surfing, the North Shore was the Mecca, and we all felt there was a future for us as pro surfers.

So if you go back in history, that winner of 75/76 was critical, because we were all charging. We were like, ‘We think there’s a future in pro surfing. We’re going to try to win every contest. We’re going to get all the photos and covers in the magazines.’ And that’s kind of what happened. After the “Busting Down the Door winter, the World Championship tour was started and look where we are 50 years later.

Is it surreal seeing where pro surfing is today?

If you go back to that point in time, we all had a dream that pro surfing could be a reality. When I was declared the first champ, I don’t think it was that meaningful at the time, because there were no other world champs. Now, I look at the list, my name’s first, then there’s Kelly Slater, the greatest of all time, and Andy Irons, Mick Fanning, Gabriel Medina, Steph Gilmore, Layne Beachley, Frida Zamba, Lisa Andersen –  now I’m on a list that really has some meaning.

The great line from the movie [Bustin Down the Door] is when is Shaun sitting on the beach with Rabbit talking about if he was going to go back to school or not, and Rabbit goes, “I’m going to be a pro surfer.” And that’s what happened. We became pro surfers [laughs].

Did you waver at all, thinking you should go back to school instead of chasing this dream of becoming a pro surfer?

I had given up the opportunity to go to school. In 1972, I had a scholarship to go to an architectural college in Australia, which was really rare. I didn’t go because I qualified for the ISA team in ’72 and I got third in that contest, which got me into the Duke in Hawaii, and that was the end of going back to school [laughs].

In those days, even though there was no pro surfing tour, we were making money as shapers. Half the tour were riding their own boards and worked for surfboard companies, shaping boards to make money. There were no sponsorship contracts from the Quicksilvers and Rip Curls and Billabongs of the world. So the only way to make a living was working for one of the surfboard companies or working on the floor in the surf shop.

Did you do that?

Yeah, that’s what I did. I shaped my own surfboards, a majority of them, for most of my career. I worked for Gordon Smith Australia, going to their surf shops during the day to sell and shape surfboards. Many of us were doing that. It was the Gypsy tour – there were a bunch of contests around the world, and you made enough money to get from one to the other, but many of us would guest shape at a factory.

Do you feel like you had an advantage shaping your own boards? Or would you have preferred to have someone shape your boards for you?

No, it wasn’t that sophisticated at that point. And everyone had a different idea of what was best. We were all riding such different equipment compared to today. If you go into the locker room at a WSL contest and you look at all the boards, they’re all so similar. The general public has no idea of the differences between Filipe Toledo’s board and Griffin Colapinto’s board. But back in those days, you had single fins and bonzers and twin fins –everyone had a different idea of what the best board to ride was to win the contest.

Related: Griffin Colapinto & Filipe Toledo’s Lowers Superheat: Did the Judges Get it Right?

When you, Shaun, Rabbit, and MR all showed up in Hawaii for the winter with pretty different equipment, did you all discuss what you thought worked?

We all gravitated to the experienced Hawaiian shapers at the time there, because we weren’t shaping boards to ride 10 to 15-foot waves – guys like Tom Parish, Dick Brewer and Mike Eaton, who specialized in boards for the North Shore.

During the time of barely making enough money to get from one spot to the next,  was there ever a time when you were questioning the path you guys were on?

No, no, we believed that dream was going to come true. We were so entrenched in “pro surfing is going to happen and we’re going to make it happen”. We went out of our way to make ourselves media-friendly, beyond the surf magazines. I mean, that’s what the troop that I was part of – the Bronzed Aussies – was all about, to attract the mainstream and some sponsorship money. In the case of the Bronzed Aussies, we got a travel deal with a travel agency, and we got our airfares paid for because we were prepared to step outside our comfort zone of being underground, cool surf dudes and go mainstream.

The surf industry sure has gone through quite a few changes since then.What are your thoughts on the surf industry today?

Well, the surf industry’s in disaster mode, but not for any reason to do with the World Championship Tour. We’re in the craziest time of the industry, with the legacy brands all in trouble, the new young crew trying to come through, Trump’s tariffs – it’s crazy at the moment. But the tour itself and the level of competition is unbelievable. The health of the pro tour is fantastic, and the actual health of participation of surfing is unbelievable. The Olympics have a lot to do with that, and also the proliferation of wave pools opening all over the world. Eventually, the state of the industry will recover from where we’re at now, because people are still going to need a surfboard. As I said to someone yesterday, you can’t surf without a surfboard, and you can’t surf naked. You always need equipment.

Do you think today’s surfers understand the sacrifices and the effort that your generation put into professionalizing surfing?

I’m not sure that they do. I think that what went down is going to come to light next year when the WSL celebrates 50 years. I think that’ll educate people about who we were and what we did. I mean, we’re in what our third generation of pro surfers? A lot of the guys today don’t even really know my generation – the first generation of pro surfers. You could argue the Corky, Caroll, Nat Young, Midget Farrelly, David Nuwwhiva, area era were pro surfers too, but not in the same way that we had a world championship tour.

Obviously a big chunk of that film highlights, let’s say, the resistance that you guys got in Hawaii after a few inflammatory articles in SURFER. Do you go to Hawaii still and is it trippy seeing the transformation of how it is now?

Yeah, I mean if you look at some other sports, they all had those sorts of issues at different times. The simplest one to look at is the integration of baseball when there were only white players. Now look at it now. We were a new generation. We came to Hawaii, we surfed differently than other people, and we weren’t that humble about it. And the magazines of the time, SURFER and Surfing played it up.

Related: When the Door Was Busted Down: Surfing’s Most Pivotal Era, 50 Years On

Are there any surfers today carrying that same revolutionary spirit as your generation?

There’s so much cool stuff going on with the women’s tour, with the older generation hanging on and the new generation coming through. From the point of view of competition, it’s never been higher or had that much depth.

Is there another “door” that you think will be busted down in surfing?

There’s going to be a real focal point on international competitive surfing when the Olympics come to LA. The birth of the surf culture as we know it today has been in Southern California. I mean, Hawaiia was the first place where there were Beach Boys and all that, but the actual culture, after Gidget was written n the 50s, the culture developed here. And as a result, when the Olympics come to California, that’s going to give surfing an even bigger boost than the Olympics have already given it.

If you were 19 or 20 years old again paddling out on the North Shore, what advice would you give yourself? Would you do anything differently?

I don’t think we’d do anything differently, because we were creating what happened. We didn’t have anything to really think about other than that what was in front of us. We had a dream that pro surfing could become a reality. And nothing was going to stop us.

Related: Surfing’s Next Generation of Young Women Are Bustin’ Down the Glass Ceiling

Before Slater, Curren and Andersen, There Was PT first appeared on Surfer on Jun 15, 2025