England's Steve Webster increased his lead to five points in the ANZ Championship, scoring 12 points in the third round Saturday.
Webster had seven birdies and two bogeys on the Horizons Golf Resort course to push his points total to 39 in the modified Stableford event. In the unique scoring system, players receive 8 points for double eagle, 5 for eagle, 2 for birdie, nothing for par, minus-1 for bogey, and minus-3 for double bogey or higher.
Australia's Nick O'Hern was second with 34 points, followed by countrymen Scott Gardiner (32) and Nick Flanagan (31), the US Amateur champion. American Ricky Barnes was at 30 along with France's Thomas Levet.
Barnes was called by tournament director Andrew Langford-Jones on Saturday morning after an American TV viewer sent an email to organizers saying that the 2002 US Amateur champion should be disqualified for improving his line by moving sand before attempting a putt on the 11th hole on Friday.
Barnes watched TV footage of the incident with officials from the Australasian and European Tours, which are co-sanctioning the event, and explained that he'd legally moved a "loose impediment" and not sand. He was cleared by tournament officials.
On Friday, Laura Davies missed the cut with a two-day total of minus-13 points -- 40 points behind the second-round leader. The Englishwoman is the first female player to compete in an event sanctioned by the European and Australasian tours.
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