MONTAUK, N.Y. â Quincy Davis never dreamed of becoming a professional surfer because it was not the sort of thing little girls dreamed about here, even those like Davis, who had the Atlantic as her backyard and a five-foot, tri-fin thruster as her swing set.  Outside of hurricane season, when the waves are as good as anywhere on the professional tour, the rides are usually too short to train on, and there can be long stretches of glassy flatness. And, besides, there was just no precedent for it. The best guys here â and they were mostly guys â surfed for fun. Their fame rarely stretched beyond their home breaks.  Yet there was Davis last Saturday morning, the third-ranked junior surfer in the world, packing her Toyota 4Runner with her stash of short boards and heading to Kennedy Airport from Montauk for a late-day departure to France, where she is competing this week in the Swatch Girls Pro for a spot on the world professional tour.  âIâm just going to go do my best,â she said, presenting a laid-back demeanor that could not completely mask the nerves peeking through. After all, sheâs embarking upon a mission that may be daunting, but it is well within reach: To become the first New Yorker, male or female, to break into modern competitive surfingâs top tier.  There are only 17 slots on the womenâs world championship tour. As of now only three of those contenders hail from the continental United States; none are from the East Coast.  Davis, 18, with sun-streaked blond hair and a slight build that belies the power behind her style, says that she does not focus on the pressure that goes with carrying such hometown hopes in her board bag. âIt gets me amped up, I guess, more excited,â she said, sitting outside her brotherâs acai bar in Montauk, Happy Bowls. Nonetheless, the pressure is there.  In this, her first year out on the qualifying circuit, Davis acknowledged she had been too deferential to competitors. She said she was working to develop a toughness that does not come naturally but that she would need if she is to reach surfingâs pinnacle in the three years before she ages out of the Association of Surfing Professionalsâ junior division. Sometimes, waves must be stolen; ocean etiquette must be forgotten.  That she has even come this far is cause for wonderment in the world she is seeking to conquer. âAll the surfers I knew were from Hawaii and California,â said Coco Ho, Davisâs best friend on the tour and a member of the famous Hawaiian Ho surfing family, and ranked among the top 17. âI was like, âWhere do you surf?â â  New York may see itself as the center of many things, but until quite recently it was considered little more than a travel hub with good restaurants and shopping for those on the professional circuit.  And Davis would not be where she is had it not been for an outpost mentality that motivated her family to carve its own way, prizing resourcefulness over perfect waves, and the beach over the classroom when deemed necessary.  Over the past two decades, they have bound themselves with another Montauk surfing family, the Engstroms. Together they went as far as the Long Island Expressway would take them and then well beyond that, turning their perch on professional surfingâs periphery into an unexpected advantage â minting two of the sportâs most recognized young stars between them (and two others with their own share of contest wins).  Paulette and Paul Davis moved to Montauk as high school sweethearts in the early 1980s from Brentwood, another Long Island community. Paul Davis had been going to Montauk since childhood. He was drawn there full time for surf and work in the home building trade, Paulette said. Paulette was happy to go along, even if it meant commuting more than two hours to J.F.K. or LaGuardia for her assignments as a flight attendant.  A surfing renaissance was well under way by then. Rick Rasmussen of Westhampton Beach had won the United States Surfing Championship contest in 1974 â before the modern circuit started â promising to give New York a real toehold in the professional ranks. But four years later he was charged with cocaine possession in Bali; in 1982 he was killed in Harlem during a drug deal that turned violent. No one from New York would go that far again.
In a rare achievement for an East Coast surfer, Quincy Davis is competing for a spot in the sportâs top tier.