Not Ready to Cash Out for a While : Tennis: Australian Pat Cash, a former Wimbledon champion, is climbing in rankings again.

The headband he wears, a tidy little number of black and white blocks, looks like the checkered flag at the finish line.

Actually, this is a lot more like a new beginning for Pat Cash, the 24-year-old Australian, who in the largely sterile setting of tennis has still managed to draw attention to himself with a volatile style of play and an equally volatile personality.

Often the results of such contradictions in style were widely varied. When Cash won Wimbledon in 1987, he won over spectators and staid Wimbledon officials with a disarmingly charming climb into the Centre Court stands to hug his mother and father.

This is the same Pat Cash who trashed a Portland, Ore., hotel room during the 1987 Davis Cup. It is the same Cash who won a tournament in Hong Kong sponsored by a cigarette company and promptly delivered an anti-smoking harangue as he accepted the winner’s check.

It is the same Cash who was thrown out of a pre-Wimbledon tournament in Beckenham for showing up late. It is also the same Cash who was quickly dubbed the “Ugly Australian” with crude comments at a press conference after he lost to Stefan Edberg in the 1989 Australian Open. Cash was said to have been ill during the match.

Question--What was your problem, Pat?

Cash--”None of your business. I don’t want to talk about it. I had my period.”

Question--Do you need antibiotics . . . any treatment?

Cash--”What for? The jack.”

His slang reference to venereal disease in the press conference, broadcast live throughout Australia, led to a public outcry that he be banned from representing the country in Davis Cup.

Cash later explained that indeed he was sick, but simply couldn’t be bothered to explain his illness.

He said, in typical Cash fashion: “I don’t regret anything.”

So it is an unrepentant Cash who finds himself playing old nemesis Boris Becker in the fourth round of Wimbledon, on the very grass where his greatest tennis triumph occurred. He is not seeded because this is his first major tournament since a 12-month layoff after ripping his right Achilles’ tendon.

In Tokyo in April a year ago, Cash fell to the court after hitting a serve. He recalls a sharp pain in the back of his right leg. He thought he had only hit himself with his racket, but when Cash tried to get up he could not move and he was carried off the court on a stretcher.

The muscles in his right calf atrophied in a cast, but Cash’s muscles are coming around just like his ranking.

Once ranked No. 4, Cash crashed all the way to No. 368, which is where he began this year. He will meet Becker ranked No. 142 and in reasonably good physical shape.

“You know, you’ve got to face these guys at some stage,” Cash said. “My aim is to get back and start working on these guys and gradually start beating them and get back to be one of the top few players in the world again.

“I doubt whether I am going to get too tense about it,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to lose. I am just going to go out there and hit the ball. I’ve got nothing to lose at all. He’s got his title to lose.”

The circumstances were reversed when Becker, the defending champion, and Cash last played. When they met in the 1988 Wimbledon quarterfinals, Cash was the defending champion.

Becker won, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, in a showdown memorable for yet another brief glimpse at Cash’s temper.

Charging a ball Becker hit short, Cash could not stop his momentum and toppled over the net. Becker playfully imitated Cash and he fell over the net.

However, Cash was not amused and said something to Becker, who quickly turned to face Cash, then decided better of it and walked away. Afterward, Becker talked about the incident.

“I have learned some new swear words today,” he joked.

When it was time for Cash’s interview, he answered questions wearing a red fright wig.

“I might have to dig it out, hey?” Cash said.

The good times began happening for Cash on the tennis court when he was 17. In 1982, he was world junior champion and won his first Grand Prix tournament. He was a member of the winning Australian Davis Cup team in 1983 and reached the semifinals of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1984.

Breaking into the top 10 at No. 8 at the end of 1984, Cash injured his back two years later and fell to No. 413. He had his appendix removed four weeks before Wimbledon in 1986. Remarkably, Cash reached the quarterfinals, led Australia to the Davis Cup over Sweden and put himself into position for his greatest triumph, the 1987 Wimbledon championship.

The road he has traveled since then has not been without its potholes, personal and professional. His relationship ended with longtime girlfriend, Norwegian Ann-Britt Kristiansen. The two children, Daniel, 3, and Mia, 2, live with with their mother in Norway, although Cash keeps them with him whenever possible.

Cash’s new girlfriend is 26-year-old Emily Bendit, half Brazilian, half English. She was a maitre’d at a London nightclub when Cash met her.

Bendit seems to get credit for mellowing Cash, if that’s possible. “I just try to smile and be pleasant,” Bendit said in a story in The Australian Magazine.

Others have noticed. Said Bruce Matthews of the Melbourne Sun, who wrote a book on Cash: “She’s taken a bit of the edge off Cashie, all right.”

Cash has even lined himself up with such a popular cause as the environment. He raised a few eyebrows at a post-match press conference with an impassioned plea on behalf of dolphins (“I think I’ve waken up a bit.”).

Cash’s influence is different now. He gave John McEnroe one of his Greenpeace T-shirts.

With homes in Melbourne, his hometown, and Fulham, not far from the All England Club, Cash trains on grass with Coach Ian Barclay and plots his latest comeback.

He will be a familiar sight on Centre Court today. The distinctive headband, the muscled thighs, the shorts that look about four sizes too small, this is Pat Cash. But will there be anything else besides the image? A thunderous serve, a deft volley, a tumble and a wig?

If history is to repeat itself, which Wimbledon will it be? At such a moment, Cash is oddly reflective. The words come easily, not strained at all. He seems relaxed, no longer on edge. It could be a temporary condition, of course. Or maybe Cash is actually at peace, contemplating the path he has followed in his long journey back.

“It’s very hard to explain,” Cash said. “It’s all coming back--the memories, the instincts, being under pressure. It’s all coming back.

“It’s a completely different thing. I don’t think there’s anybody that’s ever been in the position where I’ve been, where I am at the moment.

“Can you tell me a top player who was out for a year from the top 10 and coming back again? You can’t really get any advice from any of the players because nobody has been through that.

“So I’m going through something new and I’m learning all the time. It’s interesting and it’s exciting--that’s the reason why I came back, because why the hell not?”