■GOLF
Woods to attend celebration
World No. 1 Tiger Woods has accepted an invitation to speak during US president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration event in Washington today. “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial” is the first of several events sponsored by the Presidential Inaugural Committee for Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday. Woods is among several celebrities who will take part in today’s event at the Lincoln Memorial where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Others include Hollywood actors Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Queen Latifah and musicians Beyonce, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, James Taylor and Stevie Wonder.
■FOOTBALL
Bring it on: Lions’ Schwartz
Jim Schwartz faces the biggest challenge among the 32 NFL teams next season: Turning around a team that didn’t win a single game. Bring it on, the Detroit Lions’ new coach says. “There’s no better feeling in football than turning a situation around. That’s what drives me here,” the 42-year-old former Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator said in his introductory news conference at Ford Field in Detroit on Friday. The Lions badly want the one-time Georgetown University economics major to come up with a formula to fix a franchise coming off the NFL’s first 0-16 season, an eight-season span that has been the worst in the league since World War II and a run of more than 50 years with only one playoff win.
■BASEBALL
New York splashes cash
More than US$400 million in tax-free bonds approved on Friday by the city of New York will help the New York Yankees and New York Mets complete construction of their new stadiums to open in April. The city Industrial Development Agency overwhelmingly approved the requests from the teams despite opposition from critics. The Mets asked for and received an additional US$88.2 million on top of the US$547 million they already received to build their new ballpark in the parking lot of their old stadium. The Yankees asked for an extra US$370 million after the club received US$942 million in tax-exempt bonds in 2006. With US$1.3 billion dollars going to the clubs during tough economic times, there were critics, but city controller William Thompson was the lone vote against the Yankees. The Yankees spent US$423 million this off-season to sign free agents C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira.
■FOOTBALL
Gruden, Allen walk the plank
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers fired coach Jon Gruden and general manager Bruce Allen on Friday after the team collapsed following a 9-3 start and failed to make the NFL playoffs. Gruden, who led the Buccaneers to a victory over the Oakland Raiders in the 2003 Super Bowl, was Tampa Bay’s coach for seven seasons. Allen was general manager for the last five seasons in a reunion of a relationship that began when both were with the Raiders.
■NORDIC SKIING
Demong wins in Canada
Bill Demong of the US narrowly beat Finland’s Anssi Koivurante to win a Nordic Combined World Cup individual start event on Friday at the 2010 Olympic venue in Whistler, British Columbia. In the first of two events this weekend, Demong won in 24 minutes, 38.9 seconds, with Koivurante finishing in 25:26.3. Koivurante leads the World Cup standings with 643 points, followed by Magnus Moan of Norway with 556 and Demong with 515.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with