Vijay Singh is back to getting attention for his play on the golf course instead of his comments about Annika Sorenstam.
With his second straight 5-under 65 Friday, Singh took the second-round lead at the Byron Nelson Championship. He leads by one stroke over Tim Petrovic, who had a hole-in-one in his round of 66.
Singh created a stir after his runner-up finish last week in North Carolina by saying Sorenstam had no business playing in next week's Colonial and that he hoped she missed the cut. Before the Nelson, Singh said he was sorry if his comments came across as a personal attack and put a different spin on his words.
Since then, he has focused on playing.
"I'm very focused. I came here to win the golf tournament," Singh said Friday. "It's Byron's tournament, and I am just looking forward to playing. My mind is totally on this golf game, and that's it."
Scott Verplank had Friday's low-round, a bogey-free 63 on the par-70, 6,229m Cottonwood Valley course. He is tied at 132 with first-round leader Jeff Sluman, who followed his opening 63 at Cottonwood with a 69 that included two backside bogeys on the tougher 6,390m TPC Four Seasons at Las Colinas.
Robert Gamez (66 at Cottonwood) and Kevin Sutherland (68 at TPC) were also at 8-under 132.
Windy conditions, with sustained winds of 32kph much of the day and gusts of 48kph or more, made for fewer low scores after 88 subpar rounds Thursday. Only 42 the 155 golfers broke par Friday.
"When it is blowing as hard as it was today and gusting like it was, it's pretty difficult. I don't hit that well every single day," said Verplank, who had only two birdie putts of more than 2m.
There were 80 players who made the cut at even-par 140. It is the third time in four years that at least 80 players made the weekend, when all rounds are played on the TPC layout.
Of nine former champions in the field, only Nick Price, Phil Mickelson and Robert Damron made the cut. Defending champ Shigeki Maruyama was 1-over 141.
Singh started his back nine at Cottonwood with his second bogey, hitting a wedge over the green at the 432m 10th. He then made four straight birdies, none of the putts longer than 3m, and had another one with a 3-foot putt on the 539m 16th.
"I was very patient out there. I knew the score isn't going to go that low like it did yesterday, so I just had to be around the leaders," Singh said. "I am surprised that I'm leading where I finished."
Since missing his only cut at The Players Championship, Singh has finished no lower than 11th in his last four tournaments. He tied for sixth at the Masters and was second at the Wachovia Championship last week, and is fifth on the money list with US$1.9 million.
Petrovic's hole-in-one came on the TPC's 181m 5th hole. He hit a 7-iron downwind straight into the cup, putting him 4-under for the day.
His only subpar hole after that was at the 452m 10th when he made a 6m birdie. He gave that stroke back at the 196m 17th when he missed the green and then a 4m putt after his pitch shot.
In between, he missed several birdie chances, including a makable 4m at 15 after recovering from a poor drive with a 3-wood from 240m that he said was "probably the best shot I hit all day, even better than the hole-in-one swing." After the putt slid by the edge of the cup, he flipped his putter in the air in frustration.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier