HB Surfers Walk of Fame inductee Doyle set standard for watermen
Mike Doyle’s performs his signature bottom turn, at San Miguel, Baja. Photo by Leroy Grannis
Mike Doyle started as my idol and then became my mentor and finally, a good friend. I was a 12 year old gremmie addicted to surfing when Doyle was the worlds best all around surfer. He was winning not only the men’s division titles, but also the tandem events and paddleboard races.
On Saturday, Doyle will be recognized for his achievements with induction into the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame.
Doyle was a big guy, at 6-foot-2, 190 pounds. He had a deeply tanned, sculptured body and wavy, blond hair. Friends called him “the Hawk” because of his beak-like nose. He surfed in a style that everyone wanted to emulate. Surfers Walk of Fame charter members Hap Jacobs worked with Doyle in the early 1950s.
“Dale Velzy and I were thrilled to make Mike’s balsawood boards at our Venice shop. He surfed well in the local beach breaks and ripped at Malibu. We called him ‘Malibu Mike.’ I was fortunate to have Mike follow me back to Hermosa after Dale and I split up.”
The regular foot tore the waves apart with his radical foot work, arching, drop knee turns and cutbacks and the best head dips on the coast. On the beach he stood out like a Greek god with the perfect smile. He sold Kathy Kohner, the real life “Gidget,” her first surfboard at Malibu and became a stunt double in the “Gidget’ movies.
“Doyle had that winning smile because he was winning all the contests,” Jacobs said. “My best ads for Jacobs Surfboards in the ’60s were the ones with Tim Kelly, Henry Ford, Mike Doyle, and Marsha Bainer.”
“Leroy Grannis shot all my ads and was always late except when Marsha Bainer was in them. Then he would be half an hour early. The ad would have a clean looking Jacobs Surfboard standing upright on the beach with Doyle, Tim Kelly and Henry Ford ogling over the board while Marsha stood to the side ready to cry because nobody was looking her way. Mike was doing ads for different surf clothing companies and appeared in several TV commercials. He still is. I saw him in a TV ad just the other night.”
Doyle was born in Westchester in 1941 and began surfing at 13 next to the Manhattan Beach Pier. He started out as a goofy-footer (right foot forward,) riding the lefts through the pier for three years, but then learned to surf as a regular foot, (left foot forward,) to face the wave on the long rights at Malibu.
In the pre shortboard era, Doyle was called “The Iron Man” because he competed in three events in every surf contest. He was almost unbeatable as a paddler, winning the West Coast Paddleboard Pier Race in ’59, ’60 and ’62 going on to anchor the winning ’68’ World Surfing Championship Paddleboard Relay Race. In tandem surfing Doyle finished second in just about every contest to the legendary Pete Peterson and won the ’62 Pacific Coast Championships, the ’63 West Coast Championships, the ’65’ United States Surfing Championships and the ’63, ’64, ’65 Makaha International Surfing Championships. In ’65 he won the World Surfing Championships.
In surf contests Doyle was a consistent finalists for over a decade. He placed third place in the ’61 West Coast Surfing Championships, second in the ’64 World Surfing Championships, second in the ’66 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, first in the ’68 Duke and first in the ’69 Peru International Surfing Championships.
He won the Surfer Magazine Surfers Poll Award in ’64 and ’65 and won the Surfing’s Hall of Fame Award in ’66.
I paddled in the 10-mile ’69 Peru International Surfing Championships race with Doyle and got so sunburned that my back split open and started bleeding. Doyle was my roommate and a health food fanatic. He covered my back in wheat germ oil.
In ’67, I and the rest of the Jacobs’ team were devastated when Doyle left Jacobs for the Hansen Surfboard team in Cardiff, where he came out with the Mike Doyle Signature model.
Doyle was easy to spot on the beach. He wore long, bright flower print shorts he called he called jams, a matching shirt and a matching “Cat in the Hat” hat. His mother Mama Doyle made the wild outfits, which Doyle sold at the surfing competitions and in surf magazines.
In the mid ’60s Doyle, Rusty Miller and Garth Murphy invented the first surf wax. In 1970, he invented the single ski, a forerunner to the snowboard. Doyle and his good friend Joey Cabell, who started The Chart House Restaurant chain, are excellent skiers. They placed two bindings parallel on a short ski. If Doyle had been a skateboarder he might have arranged the bindings perpendicular to his ski and set off the snowboard revolution.
In ’74 Doyle teamed up with Tom Morey, inventor of the Boogie Board, to make the first soft top surfboard. The Doyle 9-foot-1 Morey Softboard is still the best performance soft surfboard on the market.
“Mike was always an excellent skier and made just as many friends on the mountain as he did on the beach,” Jacobs said. “This paid off for both of us. Mike would get his ski friends to take up surfing and bring them into the shop to order new boards. He does the same thing today, skiing in the winter and talking friends into coming down to Cabo San Lucas where he sells them real estate. All his wives have been good skiers too.”
Doyle has been married three times, which is ironic because he told me never to marry. In 1980, he moved to San Jose Del Cabo at the southern tip of Baja, right in front of a popular surf spot called The Rock.
Doyle had the perfect ’60s, powerful, extenuating free surfing style copied by myself and other world class surfers. The former East Coast Surfing Champion Gary Propper, who created “The Ninja Turtles,” said “Everyone wanted to surf like him, look like him and dress like him.” Australian ’66 World Surfing Champion Nat Young said, “I couldn’t believe it when he showed up at the ’64 World Contest in Sydney to practice at our local beach. I tried to copy his radical bottom turn, incorporating it into my own surfing style.”
“The thing I liked about Mike Doyle,” Jacobs said, “was he loved contest surfing and he always won or made the finals riding a Jacobs Surfboard. He wanted to surf in every contest on the coast and loved the big wave contests like the Makaha and the Duke Kahanamoku Surfing Invitational in Hawaii.”
In the winter of ’64 the Redondo Breakwater was 15-feet and the police and the lifeguards would not let anyone walk out on the rocks to get to the line-up. So Doyle and Greg Doyle paddled out of the harbor to the line-up., which was b out past the buoy.
Doyle rode the massive walls like a fun day at Hermosa. He told me not to be afraid of big waves, to just ride them like your local break.
“Every time you wipe out, you will come up, and that’s the worst that can happen to you,” he said.
The Hermosa Beach Surfers’ Walk of Fame weekend begins Friday, April 5 at the Community Center with a 6 p.m. Meet & Greet Party for Mike Doyle, this year’s inductee. Members of the public can meet Doyle as well as bid on silent auction items. Local artists will display their work. There will also be a Surf Museum Exhibit. Refreshments will be served, and the event includes the 8th annual Surf Film Fest featuring the South Bay premier of John Florence’s film “Done.” An after party will take place in the Hermosa Beach Historical Society Museum at 9 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults; $5 for kids. Pre-tickets are available at Hermosa Playhouse, 710 Pier Ave.
At 11 a.m. the next day, Saturday, April 6, Doyle will be inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame. After the ceremony and an honorary plaque is installed on the pier, Spyder Surf Fest will host a celebration on the plaza, with live music, a fashion show, interactive games and giveaways.