In every category from heroes (Sunny Garcia and Shane Dorian in Hawaii, Occy on the tour, Potts as mentor) shapers (Jason Stevens, Chills, Merrick, Arakawa for guns) Andy has kept his long-standing relationships and continued to make new ones. Perhaps the best mark of future legacy is his respect for those that have come before him. That rivalry was the greatest in surfing history and only Andy was able to manage the feat.

The classic rivalries of the previous champions – Cheyne Horan’s 3 second-place showing’s behind MR, Occy’s epic challenges to Curren – pale behind the intensity of Irons’ and Slater’s monumental battle of wills. Four magazine covers and a full length award winning film about his rivalry with Slater, kept him more in the limelight than almost any surfer anywhere.Īndy’s three titles have another aspect to them, one that adds sheen to the accomplishment: they were won against the former nine-time champ at the top of his game. Yet during his year off, interest in his career actually increased. In 2009, Andy took a year off the tour to regain perspective and focus in the competition circuit.

Along the way he gained a wife, a career and a million admirers of his talent. Together they connected the missing link.īattling his way back into the Championship Tour, Andy started winning events in every type of conditions and turned his instinctual approach into a snowball of contest victories, culminating in 3 World Titles in a row. Iron’s refocused, re-engaged and refined his game to include 2 major ingredients that had been absent: competitive consistency and personal accountability. His parents, always big supporters of his surfing passion, helped remind him of his foundation, laid in the powerful tubes of Kauai. Friends gave him the support to take a positive perspective, advising him and building the confidence he needed. For a couple of very precarious years Irons professional career was as rocky as the bottom of Teahupoo.īut Irons went back to his roots steadied by an environment much deeper than the whirlwind of stardom. The road leading to that result however was no smooth, glassy ride. Four years later Irons would claim his first World Championship. Until the 1996 Pipeline Pro: Just 17, Andy charged macking 12’ Pipeline and when the foam had settled, he had taken out both reigning Pipe Master Derek Ho and a host of touted New Schoolers who were gunning for the crown. Worlds away from the limelight, with cameras unwelcome at his breaks and line-ups heavily protected by the locals, Irons went almost entirely unnoticed. Despite a host of other ASP rookies being blown up into major contenders, Andy’s anonymity continued. His talent did not register a bleep on the screen, even though in 1995 Irons (like his 3 predecessors before him) had won the National Amateur title. Andy and his brother Bruce quietly honed their skills in the hollow majesty of Hanalei Bay, his backyard of Pine Trees, and other power-packed reef breaks, under the radar of the surf industry star-making machinery.

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