Kelly Slater

Yeah, I mean, that's the deal.

When you're young, you're after the top older veterans, and then when you're the old veteran, all the young guys are after you.

I mean, I surfed against a lot of guys on tour whose dads I surfed against.

Really?

When I was first on, their dads were kind of like the veterans or the older guys than me.

Yeah.

I don't... Look, I've worked hard, but it's not hard for me to want to do what I've done because I love surfing so much.

You really love it that much?

Really?

Yeah, I just love surfing more than anything.

Really?

When I was a kid, I grew up in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and...

I just absolutely fell in love with it.

It was different than the other sports and things to me.

It was, I felt like I had a very different intimate relationship with it.

And I was, I felt like I was learning things about the ocean and waves and surfing and how to, how to go about it that no one had ever known or something.

That's how it felt to me, you know, that's not to say I felt like as a young kid, I was better than my heroes or something, but I felt like,

I had this keen sense that my relationship with surfing and waves was my own.

I played football.

I sort of told the story to a lot of friends that my dad was our football coach, and I would skip practice to go surfing.