The world’s best surfers head inland to catch a wave

LEMOORE, Calif. — The wave shouldn’t be here, surrounded by boundless fields of nuts, vegetables and cotton. It’s an exotic crest of water six feet high, one that would be at home in Bali or the east coast of Australia. But not here, well over 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

The idea of belonging, of context, has always been central to those who ride the best waves. Surfing was born centuries ago in the South Pacific and Hawaiian islands, where it is called he’e nalu, then rebranded starting in the early 1900s in California. From the Golden State it spread to the rest of the world, surfers always beholden to the finicky variables of their passion — tide and wind, swell and direction — and enamored of its offbeat culture. For some, it remains less a sport than a lifestyle.

So to find a wave like the one that surfaces in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, which is to say a nearly perfect curl, is bizarre. And very tantalizing.

This is what has drawn 54 of the planet’s best surfers, who are competing in a vast concrete pool that is intended to introduce the sport to a new audience ahead of its Olympic debut in 2020.