Gone by the Board : Schaffer’s Surfing Career Stalled by Knee Injury

Life hasn’t been a beach lately for Ricky Schaffer, a 23-year-old professional surfer from Woodland Hills.

On Sept. 17, Schaffer had major reconstructive surgery on his right knee. Recuperation will take months. Instead of surfing, he hangs around his parents’ condo playing Nintendo, reading Stephen King novels and helping his girlfriend with homework. But he’s bored off the board.

“This is a drag,” he says.

Schaffer wakes up in a bad mood. He has surfed virtually every day for the past 10 years, but now he can hardly maneuver to the kitchen. “I’m irritable,” he says, reclining on a bed that has been set up in the family room. “I should be at the beach.”

Even the Beach Boys aren’t any help. “I don’t like them,” he says.

Schaffer picks up a remote-control device and starts a videotape. Shot by photographer Bill Bodwell, it shows Schaffer, resplendent in a lime-colored wet suit, surfing off the coast of Ventura. Riding the crest of a wave, he executes a front-side cutback off a wash, a move he has done thousands of times.

“This is where it happens,” he says, eyes avoiding the TV. “It hurts me to watch.”

On the screen, Schaffer twists across the wave, then suddenly rockets off the board as if he has been shot. The torque on his right knee had popped his tibia out of the joint, ripping the anterior cruciate ligament. A week later, Schaffer was operated on by Dr. Lewis Yocum at the Kerlan-Jobe Clinic in Inglewood, where the Clippers’ Danny Manning had similar surgery.

Schaffer was not really surprised by the injury. The knee had been troublesome for years and “would pop out once a month.” It was injured in a freak accident. When Schaffer was a fifth-grader at Wilbur Avenue School in Tarzana, his leg was pinned underneath him by a panel truck. A doctor put him in a cast for six months but did not operate.

Up until then, Schaffer had been a competitive skateboarder but was forced to give up the sport. To fill the void, he rode boogie boards at Topanga State Beach. At 13, “I surfed one day,” he says, “and I loved it from the first time.”

There was no keeping him from crossing the Santa Monica Mountains and finding the perfect wave. He either hitchhiked or bummed rides from friends or his mother. At Reseda High, he didn’t stick around for sports or activities, leaving when school let out and usually heading for Malibu, “the funnest place,” he says. “It’s a great wave.”

Known for aerials, solid back-side surfing and a smooth style, Schaffer won dozens of amateur competitions and made the U. S. National Team for the 1988 world amateur championships in Puerto Rico. He finished 13th overall in the men’s division and turned pro in early ’89.

Schaffer has had mixed success on the Pro Surfing Assn. of America tour, finishing 32nd in points last season. His acrobatics, however, have gotten his picture in surfing magazines--a two-page pullout recently appeared in Surfing--and the publicity increases his marketability.

“I’ve gotten more in endorsements than prize money,” he says.

Before his injury, Schaffer was considered the heir-apparent to Allen Sarlo, the 32-year-old unofficial King of the ‘Bu. “I’m the next one down,” says Schaffer, who lost to Sarlo in the final of the Malibu Surf Classic in August.

A veteran surfing observer didn’t think there was much difference between Schaffer and Sarlo. “Allen is Mr. Malibu for standard-foot surfers and Ricky is Mr. Malibu for goofy-foot surfers,” says Jim (Oz) Oswald, manager of Val Surf in Woodland Hills. “Allen is a really powerful surfer, but Ricky is powerful too and also has finesse.” (Goofy-foot means right foot forward on the board, standard-foot means left foot forward.)

Oswald calls Schaffer “a hot surfer with a lot of really progressive moves who’s right up there with the best Valley surfers.” And if Schaffer winds up as No. 1 at Malibu, it will be a victory for Valley surfers, who seem doomed to an eternity of hostility from West Side surfers.

Does Schaffer get hassled? “I never got caught up in that,” he says. “They can’t really say much to me because I surf a lot better than they do.”

Schaffer doesn’t expect to wax up his Rusty board until next summer. “Some people are probably saying, ‘He’s history,’ ” Schaffer says, “but I know for a fact I’ll be back.”

Not only will he be back, Schaffer predicts, “but I’ll be better than ever. The knee was never right to begin with. It would only have gotten worse. Now I’ll be able to surf a lot stronger with more power because my leg will be a lot stronger.

“Look how Danny Manning came back. And he puts a lot more strain on his knee than I do.”