Kelly Slater

Before competitions, the winningest surfer in the sport's history is a drag. Kelly Slater is too focused, too intense. His face is frozen that way, a robotic stare. It even got to the point Friday night before the final day of the Hurley Pro Trestles event held at San Onofre State Beach that Kelly Slater apologized to his girlfriend. "Sorry I'm in this head space," Slater said he told her, "but this is where I'm at and I just have to work my way through it. " On Saturday, the nine-time Assn.

Dominant online video site YouTube has launched a lineup of sports channels featuring some of the biggest names in action sports — including pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, snowboarder Shaun White and surfer Kelly Slater. The four channels seek to tap into the rising popularity of action sports — especially among teens and twentysomethings — by offering clips, commentary and live events on YouTube. The original content represents another step in the site's efforts to augment its user-created videos with more professionally programmed offerings.

Kelly Slater and Owen Wright keep running into each other. On Wednesday, their habit made history. At the Hurley Pro at Lower Trestles near San Clemente, the duo became the first to reach the finals of three consecutive Assn. of Surfing Professional's World Tour events, the sport's major league level. And the legendary Slater earned his fifth title here in the last seven years by beating Wright in a neck-and-neck final, 17.50 to 16.74. Slater walked away with the $105,000 first-place check and momentum as the top-ranked player in the World Title rankings who is trying for his 11th world title.

Danica Patrick will make her Sprint Cup debut in the season-opening Daytona 500 in February, her first of 10 races in NASCAR's highest division for Stewart-Haas Racing next season. Patrick unveiled her limited Cup schedule and new car Friday in Texas. She will drive the No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet. That is the same number she had in go-karts. Team owner Tony Stewart said the team is set on eight of Patrick's 10 races. Her second scheduled race will be May 12 at Darlington, with the others that are set coming late in the season.

Nine-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater, who struggled at the start of the season and recently acknowledged there was only "a distant possibility" he will contend for a 10th title, might upgrade his outlook at week's end. That's because the Floridian superstar, who was ranked eighth coming into the Hurley Pro at Lower Trestles in San Clemente, is still in contention while many top surfers were eliminated during or before the third round....

Kelly Slater ducks into a pinball arcade on the boardwalk. The place is dimly lit, raucous with buzzes and bells. It seems like a good spot to hide from autograph hounds and reporters. And the girls who squeal his name. All surfers on the professional tour put up with some adulation, but it's different for Slater. Barely 21, this slender kid in baggy shorts is being groomed as the sport's first pop idol.

Kelly Slater, who is still looking forward to his senior year of high school, has been a professional surfer for all of two weeks. So why is everybody pegging this 18-year-old kid as a future world champion? "He's the great white hope of the U.S.," said Carl Wieser, a veteran Assn. of Surfing Professionals judge who helps decide who will be world champion. "He's the natural."

Later this week, Kelly Slater will finish a day of classes at Cocoa Beach (Fla.) High School, stop by his bank and deposit a check for $30,600. Not bad for a week of surfing in Southern California. Slater, 18, competing in only his seventh contest as a professional, scored a perfect 50 on one of his five waves to win in the finals of the $100,000 Body Glove surfing competition at Lower Trestles. When asked what he would do with his prize money, Slater said: "Keep it."

There's nothing conventional about the group milling around in the San Diego Convention Center. A CEO in striped shorts is negotiating with a buyer who has a pierced tongue and tattoos on his bald head. A retailer with a parrot on his shoulder haggles with an apparel-company rep, who is topless under her clear plastic raincoat.

Wearing wetsuits and armed with waterproof cameras, the surfing paparazzi swarmed into the clear waters of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, last year. They were in search of more than just a photo of Kelly Slater. They wanted an answer. What surfwear company was he going to sign with? The photographer who bagged this shot would have the surfing magazines begging for it.

Theo Epstein is looking for a manager to lead the Chicago Cubs. He knows exactly the type of candidate he wants too. In his first major on-field move since becoming the team's president of baseball operations, Epstein fired Mike Quade on Wednesday and began the search for the manager's replacement. The move came one day after the club introduced General Manager Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod , the new head of scouting and player development. Epstein, who joined the Cubs a little more than a week ago, quickly laid out the qualifications he has in mind for the team's next manager.

Kelly Slater and Owen Wright keep running into each other. On Wednesday, their habit made history. At the Hurley Pro at Lower Trestles near San Clemente, the duo became the first to reach the finals of three consecutive Assn. of Surfing Professional's World Tour events, the sport's major league level. And the legendary Slater earned his fifth title here in the last seven years by beating Wright in a neck-and-neck final, 17.50 to 16.74. Slater walked away with the $105,000 first-place check and momentum as the top-ranked player in the World Title rankings who is trying for his 11th world title.

The men's U.S. Open of Surfing final at Huntington Beach turned out to be so lopsided that even a competitor like Kelly Slater started feeling sorry for his counterpart, Yadin Nicol. For 31 minutes of the 35-minute final Sunday, Nicol did not ride a wave even though his opponent ended up giving him first crack at whatever was out there. "When you're that guy that's leading, you're just hoping time is running out," said Slater, who led the whole way. "And then I just started feeling so bad. I came up to him and said, 'Man, I am so frustrated for you right now. I have priority, but you can have whatever wave you want.' " The 10-time world champion dominated the mediocre conditions and won his second Open title.

Andy Irons, a renowned surfer and three-time world champion from Hawaii, died Tuesday from complications from an undisclosed illness, the Assn. of Surfing Professionals International said. He was 32. Irons had withdrawn from an ASP World Tour event in Puerto Rico, the Rip Curl Search, over the weekend due to the illness and died "during a layover en route to his home in Kauai, Hawaii," according to an Irons family statement released by the ASP. The statement did not list the exact location or cause of death, but the Associated Press reported that his father, Phil Irons, confirmed the surfer's death.

Before competitions, the winningest surfer in the sport's history is a drag. Kelly Slater is too focused, too intense. His face is frozen that way, a robotic stare. It even got to the point Friday night before the final day of the Hurley Pro Trestles event held at San Onofre State Beach that Kelly Slater apologized to his girlfriend. "Sorry I'm in this head space," Slater said he told her, "but this is where I'm at and I just have to work my way through it. " On Saturday, the nine-time Assn.

If there's such a thing as too much beauty in a film, the surfing documentary "Highwater" is guilty of it. Director-writer-narrator Dana Brown ("Step Into Liquid"), working with cinematographer Steve Matzinger, has crafted a compelling, thoroughly gorgeous look at late 2005's Triple Crown of Surfing, the granddaddy of big wave championships, which is held yearly on Oahu's famed North Shore. Brown (son of "The Endless Summer" helmer Bruce Brown) passionately covers the 55-day, three-tiered event in all its athletic glory, incorporating awesome surfing footage, casual interviews with the contest's many competitors (including top pros such as Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Chelsea Georgeson and teen sensation Jon-Jon Florence)

Dominant online video site YouTube has launched a lineup of sports channels featuring some of the biggest names in action sports — including pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, snowboarder Shaun White and surfer Kelly Slater. The four channels seek to tap into the rising popularity of action sports — especially among teens and twentysomethings — by offering clips, commentary and live events on YouTube. The original content represents another step in the site's efforts to augment its user-created videos with more professionally programmed offerings.

The hometown hero edged out the legend to reach the final. And once there, all that stood between him and a repeat win in surfing's largest and highest-paying event was the No. 1-ranked surfer in the world. Friends, family and fans crowded the water's edge to wish their hero good luck as he trotted out to face the world's finest. And when Huntington Beach native Brett Simpson returned to that water's edge, having defeated Jordy Smith to win the U.S. Open of Surfing on Sunday in his backyard, those friends, family and fans lifted him onto their shoulders and cheered — just as they did last year.

The water wouldn't cooperate much. It mostly stayed flat in the heat of a Southern California afternoon, providing scant waves here or there. But Carissa Moore made do riding those few waves, and the last one Saturday took her to the biggest paycheck in the history of women's surfing as she defeated Sally Fitzgibbons in the U.S. Open of Surfing women's final at Huntington Beach. The winner's prize: $50,000 — a sizable increase from the previous amount of $20,000. "It's pretty amazing," said Moore, who finished with a heat total of 12.50 out of 20 to Fitzgibbons' 3.83.