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Exec downtime: squash, golf, and ... surfing?
Corporate executives and professionals are trading their wingtips for wet suits as surfing becomes the hobby du jour of the white-collar crowd.
from the May 24, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
The boardroom culture doesn't always mingle easily with the surfboard culture, though. Some traditionalists lament the newcomers' lack of respect for the sport and high seas. "These corporate folks get all giddy as soon as their feet touch the sand," says Roberts, the surfing instructor. "Sometimes it's annoying because I have to settle them down like children. I tell them, 'You have to take the water seriously.' "
Others resent all the talk of high finance and low prime rates in their laid-back domain. Hey, this is surfing. If anything, they want the ethos of the sport – fun, respect, camaraderie – to change the corporate cubicle. "Surfing has become the trendiest, coolest thing, and now the coastal regions have taken to surfing" the way the rest of the country has taken to baseball, says Matt Warshaw, author of the "Encyclopedia of Surfing." "It shouldn't matter that lawyers and doctors and teachers are in the water, but it kind of does."
Professor Hall gets even more cosmic about it. "There is a lot of symbolism in surfing. You shed your clothing, adopt nakedness, leave the land, and go into the water," he says. "But when you return to the land, it is about the respect for self, environment, and the people around you. And most importantly, it's about bringing that aloha spirit back to the boardroom."
Marc Kalan brings that spirit back to the clinic. He is a couple miles up the coast, about to enter the water with a 10-foot board. "I don't mean to come off as a cheese ball," says the infertility specialist at the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, who has a pile of scrubs and surf wax in his back seat. "But I really do get a sense that I'm more in tune at work and better able to relate to my patients after a good surf."
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