Darren O'Rafferty

Just as the young braves of the Native Americans of the Great Plains “counted coup” to prove their bravery as a rite of passage, so are there certain rites that young professional surfers must pass through on their arc to manhood: Winning a WQS, scoring a perfect 10, making the WCT, winning a WCT, riding a 20-foot wave and one of the most important of them all: Beating Slater.

Darren O’Rafferty has never won a WQS or a WCT, but he did beat Slater and that’s almost as good. This was in June of 2005 at the Rip Curl Search WCT at Reunion Island – a long, barreling left reef of the sort that Slater loves. O’Rafferty paddled out against The Champ and found that the ocean was on his side. His first wave, “…hit the inside bowl perfectly which gave me a chance to do three turns under the lip,” O’Rafferty said on www.ripcurl.com/reunion. “It was such a dream wave and I got a 9.33 so you don't get much better than that. But more so, it doesn't take much for Kelly to turn a five point wave into an 8.0 or a 9.0, so I was lucky.”

Slater described it like this: “Darren's opening wave was definitely the best wave that came through during the heat and he surfed it right,” Slater was quoted on the www.ripcurl.com/reunion website. “It put me on the chopping block and at that point you normally want to match him but in reality the chance of getting another 9.0 was possible but not probable. Realistically, if I could've had two good scoring rides [rather than one excellent ride] I could've been in that heat. I got the one 8.0 but I couldn't get a second. It was just math. You're not surfing against a guy, you’re surfing against a number.”

Not entirely right. Slater was surfing against a guy named Darren O’Rafferty, an Australian 20-Something who was born in suburban Penrith but got lucky when his parents moved to Bonny Hills, on the coast about halfway between Sydney and Queensland. There is a fair bit ‘o surf along there, and Darren and his brother Mick were thrown into it all on coolites. Very shortly after, Darren and Mick lead a charge of country Australian kids who took over the Junior circuit. O’Rafferty jumped onto the Rip Curl Search to get a taste of the world, then jumped on the WQS in 1998: “If James Bond surfed it would look something like Raff,” the www.worldprosurfers.com website said. “Raff never stumbles. Never falls off his board. Raff made short work of the WQS and has been in the big league for five years.”

In that five years O’Rafferty has had his moments, including that crucial win over Slater at Reunion, and catching the best wave of the event at the Sunset contest in 2004. He hasn’t won a WQS or a WCT yet, but he’s only a 20-Something and time is on his side.