The collapse never came, even as a once-sizable lead dwindled to a single precarious stroke. This time, Sunday didn't crush Jason Gore. It belonged to him.
Gore, whose last-day unraveling already is part of US Open lore, stood up to the 84 Lumber Classic field Sunday with big drives and steely nerves to win on the PGA Tour barely a month after being stuck in golf's minor leagues.
Gore's four-stroke lead with five holes to play was down to one over runner-up Carlos Franco by No. 18, but Gore landed his approach shot on the 468-yard par-4 on the lower fringe of the green. With a playoff looming if he didn't get up and down, Gore deftly lagged his putt from 91 1/2 feet to within 22 inches, and tapped in for a final-round 2-under 70, a US$792,000 paycheck and the Tour victory he once thought might never come.
His 14-under 274 denied Franco (69) his first PGA victory since 2001 and was three shots better than third-place finisher Ben Crane (67).
Gore never finished higher than 18th during two previous stays on the PGA Tour, in 2001 and 2003. Now, he joins Paul Stankowski (1996) as the only golfers to win on the developmental Nationwide and PGA tours in the same year.
The portly, big-swinging Gore is the first to do so after earning the automatic in-season promotion that goes to any three-time Nationwide winner.
Now, all those public course duffers who think they could make the leap to golf's big leagues have a new hero to go with John Daly.
Gore, 31, looks as much like a spectator as he does a pro, and his caddy wears not a Nike or a Titleist cap, bur one plugging Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Annika Sorenstam hopes her second straight victory at the John Q. Hammons Classic is a springboard to another strong finish to the US LPGA season.
Sorenstam closed with a 2-over 73 and withstood a late charge from American rookie Paula Creamer to win the Hammons Classic for the third time in four years on Sunday.
Sorenstam made 15 straight pars to start the final round and overcame bogeys on two of the last three holes to finish one shot ahead of Creamer at 5-under 208 for her seventh tour win in 14 starts this season and 63rd overall. She also won a European Tour event in her native Sweden this year.
After winning the Hammons Classic last year, Sorenstam went on to win three of her next five events and picked up her seventh player of the year award.
"For me, it's important to play good at the end of the year," Sorenstam said.
"There's a lot of things that are at stake. We're talking money list, we're talking player of the year, Vare Trophy.
"Those are goals of mine and they mean a lot. A victory here sets me up a little closer to my goals."
US Open champion Michael Campbell won the World Match Play Championship by beating Paul McGinley 2 and 1 in the final.
Campbell took advantage of some errors by the Irishman on the closing holes at Wentworth to wrap up the match with a chip to 1 foot on the 35th green.
The victory earned Campbell ?1 million (US$1.8 million), the largest prize in golf.
It also put The New Zealander on top of the European Order of Merit ahead of Retief Goosen, who he beat in Saturday's semifinals.
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