World No. 1 Lorena Ochoa posted her second successful title defense of the year by easily winning the US$1 million LPGA Samsung World Championship on Sunday.
Ochoa started the round tied with Norway's Suzann Pettersen before going on to shoot a six-under 66 for 18-under 270 and her seventh title of the year.
"I have been trying to get my seventh victory for a couple of weeks," said Ochoa, who clinched the Player of the Year Award. "I like being on top, and I am going to continue to work hard."
"Everything is coming together," she said. "I understand myself a lot better, and I know how to handle the pressure."
She finished with seven birdies and made one bogey for a four-stroke win over South Korea's Kim Mi-hyun, who shot a three-under 69 and finished at 14-under 274.
Pettersen, who overcame Ochoa on the second hole of sudden death playoff to win the Longs Drugs Challenge last week, shot even-par 72 to finish six shots adrift at the Palm Springs-area Bighorn Golf Club.
South Korean Jang Jeong was in a group of three golfers that began the round a stroke behind Ochoa and Pettersen.
While the other two stumbled, Jang's strong play enabled her to tie Ochoa on the ninth hole.
The Mexican birdied the 10th to reclaim the lead, and that lead doubled when Jang bogeyed 13.
Ochoa extended the lead to four with back-to-back birdies at 14 and 15, and Jang lost her shot at second place with a bogey at 17, while Kim birdied the final hole to grab the runner-up spot.
Kim who ranks 114th on the tour in driving distance, admitted her finish was something of a surprise on a course she considers more suited to long hitters.
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