MIKE DOYLE

"Original water-man known as " Malibu Mike" , "Iron Man Mike", "Tiki Mike" and "The Hawk"

Champion paddleboard racer, tandem rider, big wave rider, and arguably the 1960's best all around surfer. Doyle was born 1941 in Los Angeles, raised in Inglewood and Westchester. He began surfing at age 13 at the Manhattan Beach Pier. He rode goofy foot for three years, then relearned as a regular footer in 1956 once he began surfing Malibu. He surfed as a stunt double on the movie Gidget in 1959. The easy smiling Doyle himself was in many ways the archetypal California teenage surfer: deeply tanned with peroxide-blonde hair, rowdy and prank-happy but not malicious. 

Doyle's presence in the surf world came partly from his reputation as a competitor, but just as much from his powerful and slightly theatrical free-sufing style. He was bigger than most surfers, and vastly more athletic. Mike competed in and won many paddle board races, tandem, and non-tandom surf contests. He also won the Surfer Magazine Readers Poll Award in 1964 & 1965.

Doyle was innovative and entrepreneurial. In the mid 60s he cofounded Surf Research and developed the first surfing specific board wax; in 1970 he invented the Single Ski, a forerunner to the snowboard, featuring the same spongy covering as the Morey Boogie bodyboard, and the prototype for today's soft exterior surfboards used by beginners.

Mike is featured in more than two dozen surf movies of the late 50's and 60's, including Surf Safari (1959), Barefoot Adventure (1960), Cavalcade of Surf (1962), Strictly Hot (1964), and Golden Breed (1968).

Morning Glass: The Adventures of Legendary Waterman Mike Doyle, a self published autobiography, was released in 1993. Doyle moved to San Jose del Cabo at the the southern tip of Baja California, in 1980. He's been married three times and has no children."

-TEOS