■GOLF
Daly’s wife denies theft
An attorney for John Daly’s estranged wife, Sherrie Daly, says she did not steal the pro golfer’s cellphone. Randy Fishman said on Monday that “this is a divorce case and people accuse each other of stuff all the time.” Sherrie Daly was freed on a US$500 bond on Friday after being accused of stealing the phone from the golfer’s tour bus in June. The bus was parked behind the John Daly Bar & Grill in the north Mississippi city of Olive Branch. Fishman says he expects nothing to come of the misdemeanor charge of petit larceny. A court date is set for Thursday next week. Sherrie Daly lives in Germantown, Tennessee.
■GOLF
Host Woods announces field
Tournament host Tiger Woods has announced a strong field featuring five of the world’s top 10 players for the year-ending Chevron World Challenge. The 16-man line-up includes Fiji’s Vijay Singh (ranked third), British Open and PGA champion Padraig Harrington of Ireland (fourth), Americans Anthony Kim (sixth) and Jim Furyk (10th) and Colombian Camilo Villegas (seventh). World No. 1 Woods, however, will be a conspicuous absentee from the field, having shut down his 2008 campaign in mid-June after winning the US Open to have reconstructive knee surgery. The US$5.75 million event will be held at the Jack Nicklaus-designed Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California from Dec. 18-21.
■BASKETBALL
Nolan leads Detroit to finals
Deanna Nolan scored 21 points and Taj McWilliams-Franklin added 19 to help the Detroit Shock reach the WNBA finals for the third straight season with a 75-73 win over the New York Liberty on Monday. The Shock won the best-of-three Eastern Conference finals and advanced to play the San Antonio Silver Stars for the championship. Detroit beat Sacramento in 2006 for its second league title, then lost in five games to Phoenix last year. On Monday, the Shock led by 20 in the first half, but had to fight off the deeper Liberty in the second half. Sixth woman Plenette Pierson, who played well in Sunday’s Game 2 just seven days after dislocating her shoulder, was limited to two points in six minutes.
■FIELD HOCKEY
Charlesworth named coach
Olympic champion Ric Charlesworth was appointed coach of the Australian men’s hockey team yesterday, two months after quitting as India’s technical director. Charlesworth, a former Australia captain who guided his country’s women’s team to gold medals at the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics, will take over from Barry Dancer, who resigned after the Beijing games. A spate of retirements since Beijing will leave Charlesworth with the task of rebuilding the Australian men’s team, which has gradually slipped from world field hockey supremacy. “The team changes all the time and the team which played in Beijing will never play together again,” Charlesworth said.
■TENNIS
Serena would take Porsche
Serena Williams would happily forego the US$100,000 prize money that goes to the winner of the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart. She’d much rather drive off in the bright red convertible parked courtside. The tournament gives the winner a choice — either a cash prize or a low-slung Porsche 911 sports car. Williams has no doubts about which she’d prefer. “I’ve been trying for so long to win the Porsche, it’s about time to take that 911 home,” Williams said.
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