Padraig Harrington shot an 8-under 63 on Thursday and zoomed past Phil Mickelson and everyone else to take the first-round lead in the Nissan Open.
Harrington opened with three straight birdies. He ran off four in a row after making the turn, and even picked one up on the tough 15th hole when his 5-iron hit the pin and settled 1.2m away.
His only bogey on the back nine came from a three-putt on the par-3 14th, and the Irishman had a reasonable explanation for that.
PHOTO: AP
"At this stage, I'm feeling invincible," he said. "I didn't think I was ever not going to make birdie."
It gave him a three-shot lead over Mickelson, Briny Baird and Pat Perez. Jim Furyk, Sergio Garcia and David Howell were among those in the group at 67 on a spectacular day of sunshine and shotmaking on the storied Riviera Country Club off Sunset Boulevard.
Six players failed to finish the first round when it was too dark to continue; they were to finish yesterday morning.
Mickelson is playing for the first time since 2001 at Riviera, where he has never had much success.
The only other time Howell has played Riviera was two years ago, when it took four days to complete 36 holes because of rain. The Englishman found conditions quite different this year, and he was duly impressed -- by Riviera and by Harrington.
"This is a great golf course," he said. "And that is a hell of a round."
Mickelson played with Ernie Els, one of several international stars making their first appearances on the US tour this season. Els labored to keep the ball in the fairway, but escaped with enough clutch pars -- getting up-and-down from 82m on his final hole -- for a 69 that left him pleased.
Even though it has been six years since Mickelson has been to Riviera, he still remembers a few tricks. With a back right pin on the short but tricky 10th hole, Mickelson still pounded a driver that landed on the green some 288m away and into a back bunker. His logic was to hit beyond the green, because it slopes to the back.
"Where I was, I at least had a chance to stop it," Mickelson said, and he left himself a 2.4m shot he made for birdie. "I haven't played here in years, and it's pretty obvious you've got to get past the hole."
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