Kelly Slater makes a cut atop a wave during a heat at the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach on Thursday. Slater, who has won the ASP world title an unprecedented 11 times, is currently ranked No. 2 in the world.

At the Florida shorebreak, the boy surveyed the Atlantic Ocean as it punched land.

He calculated the sizes and shapes of the undulating waves, analyzed the angles and directions as they arrived and deciphered what he believed was a language meant just for him.

“I felt like I was interacting with the waves,” Kelly Slater says, “and they were interacting with me.”

About a decade later, the 15-year-old danced with the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii, and other surfers saw how he read the water in ways they could not, as if he were plugged into its energy and had uncovered secret rhythms.

“He had a connection with the way the ocean moved that was light-years beyond his peers,” says Chris Malloy, Slater’s longtime friend…

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