Surfer Ted Deerhurst was born Edward George William Omar Coventry on September 24, 1957 in England. His father was a champion fencer who was educated at Eton College and his mother was an American starlet who briefly dated King Faroukh of Egypt prior to marrying the 11th Earl of Coventry. In the wake of his parents separating when he was a child, Ted became the subject of a long and bitter custody battle at age fifteen. Deerhurst discovered surfing after he was spirited away by his mother to live in California. However, the Earl eventually won the case and Ted was forced to return to England. Deerhurst broke from his family and moved to Hawaii at age eighteen. Ted reconciled with his father after he was chosen to represent Great Britain in the World Amateur Surfing Championships.

Deerhurst subsequently turned pro in 1977 and participated in many surf contests throughout the years, but never won a single event or made the top one hundred in the annual professional rankings (the high point of his surfing career occurred when he made the semi-finals of the Smirnoff Pro-Am contest at Sunset Beach, Hawaii in 1978). Undaunted by his constant lack of success, Ted continued to surf all around the world for the sheer love of it. Moreover, Deerhurst also shaped his own line of surfboards and set up the Excalibur Foundation to enable handicapped and underprivileged children to go surfing. Ted died of heart failure at age forty on October 4, 1997 in Oahu, Hawaii. Deerhurst was still participating in surfing competitions at the time of his death.