CHARGER NOTEBOOK / CURT HOLBREICH : Woodard to Undergo More Tests for Chest Pains

Charger linebacker Ken Woodard said Sunday he will undergo further tests today to determine the cause of chest pains he experienced last week.

Woodard said he was at home Thursday night when he began to feel the pains and shortness of breath. When the problem persisted for six hours, he said, he checked himself into Palomar Hospital in Escondido.

“I was hoping it was just a bad case of heartburn or indigestion,” said Woodard, 30. “The cardiologist said he found something a little different in the EKG, which might be normal for an athlete, but it is not normal for a normal heartbeat.”

Woodard, who has not practiced for two days, said he will take another EKG today. The results of that test will be compared to the one he took Friday morning and another taken during the team’s mini-camp in May.

Coach Dan Henning said earlier team tests showed Woodard to have some irregularities in his heartbeat.

“If these irregularities are the same as before, we don’t think it’s a problem,” Henning said. “But when a guy has chest pains with it, you want to be as careful as you can.”

Woodard said he has had some cramping in his chest before but never anything like this.

“I tried to go to sleep but it woke me right up,” Woodard said.

Woodard said he struggled for breath while he was driven 10 minutes to hospital.

“I had to hold my hands over my head,” Woodard said. “It was the shortness of breath; it wasn’t just the pain anymore.”

Woodard is in his ninth NFL season and third with the Chargers. He is listed as a linebacker but was used exclusively on special teams in 1989 and voted outstanding special teams player.

Defensive lineman Lee Williams missed his second day of training camp Sunday, and team officials said they have not heard from him or his agent since Williams left camp Saturday morning, upset that the team will not renegotiate his contract.

“Nothing, not a word,” General Manager Bobby Beathard said.

Beathard said he had been expecting since Saturday morning a telephone call from the agent Steve Feldman to discuss another of his clients, cornerback Gill Byrd, who is without a contract. But he said Feldman has not called to discuss either matter--or two other unsigned clients, Vencie Glenn and Junior Seau--since a meeting Saturday morning in which Williams said he would leave if the team would not renegotiate.

Beathard said the team sent Williams a telegram Saturday informing him that if he did not report back within five days, he could be fined a league maximum $1,000 per day and placed on the reserve/left camp list. Players in that category receive no pay and are prohibited from playing in the NFL this season.

Beathard said the letter was a formality required by the NFL and that no decision has been made about what to do if Williams does not return by the deadline.

Beathard said he used the ultimate step of placing a player on the reserve/left camp list once, with running back John Riggins when he was general manager at Washington. Riggins sat out the 1980 season without pay.

Neither Feldman nor Williams could be reached for comment Sunday. Feldman said Saturday that Williams would not scared into reporting back.

“I don’t see him coming back any time soon,” Feldman said.

Williams has three seasons remaining on a five-year contract he signed before the 1988 season. That contract would pay him approximately $700,000 in base salary this season, sources have said.

Feldman said Beathard’s predecessor, Steve Ortmayer, promised Williams he would renegotiate if Williams made the Pro Bowl for two consecutive seasons, which he accomplished last year.

But Beathard has said he has found no evidence that such a promise existed and that he is not bound by any oral promises made by Ortmayer.

Charger Notes

Injuries continue to frustrate the Chargers. Donald Frank, a free-agent cornerback from Winston-Salem State who has impressed the staff since the May mini-camp, pulled a hamstring Sunday, Coach Dan Henning said. Already thin at receiver because of serious injuries to veterans Wayne Walker (knee surgery) and Troy Johnson (broken ribs), Henning had to hold rookies Walter Wilson (groin) and Nate Lewis (knee) out of practice.