The nineties is the decade in which women's surfing has come into its own. First, there was the arrival of Floridian Lisa Anderson, the first woman to win four world titles in a row. In the late eighties, Anderson started out on the tour as a fickle teenager who, according to surf journo Jodi Young "would either crumble away like a cookie on contact with water or swell into a competitive giant that would kick your butt back to shore", and by 1994 had clinched her first world title. Over that period she also developed a style that branded the women's World Championship tour with an image firmly independent of that of the men. "Lisa set the standard, and everyone else took that as a role model and said that's how we want to be. We want to be aggressive but still reflect a feminine attitude," world No. 7, Hawaiian Rochelle Ballard told Pro Surfing's Hope Winsborough.

Aggressive femininity. It's an image Kahlua evidently found fitting for their product for in 1997 the beverage company took on the sponsorship of the women's World Championship Tour. Consequently, 1997 was the first year in which a 2-tiered system - including the WCT which is limited to the Top 11, and the Women's World Qualifying Series (WQS) - came into effect. The impact of this was immediately felt, as, comments Jodi Young, "the level of performance on both tours was markedly improved as a result of stiffer, more serious competition."

The nineties also happens to be the decade in which Bali's surf scene has undergone some important developments, giving local gromets more reason than ever to get serious about surfing. Firstly, it is only in the past ten years that most of the international surf labels have set up shop here, thus broadening budding Balinese talents' access to sponsorship deals. A second and related development is the establishment of the annual Quiksilver Pro, the men's WCT event that lands the world's top 44 in Bali before ferrying them to the G-Land surf camp on Bali's easternmost tip. And thirdly, since 1989 the Quiksilver International Gromet Championship has been held at Kuta Beach each May, furnishing the best of Bali's young surfers with the opportunity to compete in an international event on their home break. These developments, plus the parallel rise of Rizal Tanjung on the WQS - proving that a gromethood at Kuta can serve as a basis for surfing success - have worked to boost many local gromets' confidence and set their sights on professional surfing careers.

Parallel developments in international women's surfing on the one hand and the Bali surf scene on the other should, one would assume, have spawned a healthy local surfer-girl sub-culture. Not so. I have been eager to devote a 'Home Grown' story to a local gromet girl since beginning the column almost a year ago. But to my enquiries always came the disappointing response: 'Balinese girls don't surf!' - a point of view supported by the fact that the convening of the International Gromet Championship at Kuta, whilst indeed urging many of the boys into action, had failed to surface any local women boardriders. That is, until last May (1998) when for the first time two local teens, who only several months previously had decided that the gromet girl lifestyle was for them, took the plunge to become the first Balinese girls to compete in the contest.

HALFWAY

Kuta Beach's esplanade is a broad, one-way avenue that begins as it sweeps north around the Hard Rock Beach Club and runs for a couple of kilometres before turning east again into Jalan Melasti. The half-way point on this esplanade - hemmed on one side by a firm cement walkway that buffers the active street from the shifting sands, and on the other by a series of luxury hotels - is marked by a cluster of boys who, skin sun-blackened and hair sun-bleached, slump over their planks in blissful exhaustion and gaze seaward where their mates bob, like the stiff horses of a merry-go-round, beyond the break.

Above :
Wayan Kartini

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