Tony Heff / WSL
30 Years Later, Kelly Slater Is Still The Most Dominant Pipeline Surfer Ever
Kelly Slater’s first Championship Tour victory came at the 1992 Pipe Masters. "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot was on the Billboard charts, “A Few Good Men” with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson was in theaters and Taylor Steele’s “Momentum” was just lighting up VCRs. He beat Sunny Garcia and Barton Lynch, as well as Pipe specialist Liam McNamara in the Final. Slater’s victory signaled that the dawning of the New School generation was at hand.
Over 30 years later, and thankfully our taste in music, movies and denim shorts has evolved, but one constant at Pipe over all that time has been Slater. From 1991 through 2023, he’s finished fifth or better an astounding 23 times and has a record seven Pipe Masters crowns to his credit, as well as his historic win at the Pipe Pro in 2022 in all-time conditions. Nobody even comes close to that kind of longevity and dominance. For a little perspective, an American has only won the Pipe Masters 10 times and Slater makes up 70-percent of that total.
Like music and movies, the Slater of 2024 is a different animal than the Slater of 1992, but somehow, as he braces for the start of the Championship Tour this month with the Pipe Pro, the man endures. Going back to 2015, four of Slater’s six loses have come at the hands of World Champions. And in 2018, he lost to Julian Wilson, who was embroiled in a World Title race against Gabriel Medina and ultimately finished the year ranked number two in the world.
Slater’s only real shocker came in the 2019 Semifinals against Italo Ferreira where only garnered a very uncharacteristic 2.57 heat score. But he still made the Semis and only ended up losing to the eventual World Champ. In 2023, Slater finished 17th against Yago Dora in a wave-starved heat in which neither surfer broke a six-point combined heat score. In 30 years a heat like that’s bound to happen.
So, how do you beat Slater at Pipe? In most cases it appears you don’t. He’s dedicated his life to surfing the place, owns a house on the beach there and has been posting wins and big results there for the last three decades.
Slater is battling back from offseason hip surgery. When asked about his rehab recently he was coy with his answer but has been on the North Shore the last few weeks and was just spotted surfing Haleiwa with his good friend Jack Johnson.
For the last few years, we’ve been plagued by the questions, “Will this be Slater’s last year on Tour?” and “Will he ever get a 12th World Title?”
In what is likely Slater’s farewell tour around the world, he’s starting the year at Pipe, has the Surf Ranch and Tahiti to look forward to before wrapping things up at his beloved Cloudbreak. If he’s not careful he may end up qualifying for the WSL Finals and ending his career right where he started it, at Lower Trestles.
