Nick Watney of the US stole Tiger Woods’ thunder at the WGC-HSBC Champions yesterday as he raced to a two-shot lead, but the world No. 1 is lurking dangerously three off the pace.
Watney, who qualified for the US$7 million event by winning February’s Buick Invitational on the USPGA Tour, stormed out of the blocks with back-to-back birdies and never looked back.
He ended with an eight-under 64 to tie the course record and it could have been better if not for a bogey on the last.
Fellow American Ryan Moore, Germany’s Martin Kaymer and Northern Ireland’s Shane Lowry are in a share of second after firing 66s. A group of four are one further back on five-under, including Paul Casey, Anthony Kim and Lin Wen-tang, with the Taiwanese star the best-placed player from the Asian Tour.
They sit alongside Woods, who has made clear he wants to win this week after finishing second in 2005 and 2006.
“I was putting well and just tried to give myself as many chances as possible, and I was able to make a few,” said the California-based Watney, who has two PGA Tour titles to his name.
This year the tournament has been upgraded to a World Golf Championship event this year and the size of the galleries reflected the surging interest, with more people on the course yesterday than over the whole weekend last year.
Most of the attention was on Woods, with at least 1,000 spectators following him around the par-72 Sheshan Golf Course on a sun-drenched day, with the cameras clicking despite appeals for fans not to take pictures.
The US superstar, who has won an unprecedented 16 of the 30 WGC events he has entered, started on the 10th and went to the turn at two-under with birdies at the 14th and 16th.
Four more birdies on the back nine pushed him up the leaderboard, although a bogey on the sixth (his 15th hole) blotted his scorecard.
His long-time rival Phil Mickelson, the 2007 champion, had a solid day to be two behind Woods.
Among European Tour players, money leader Lee Westwood stroked a 70, while Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy struggled to a 73.
It was a disastrous day for defending champion Sergio Garcia, with the Spaniard out-of-sorts to be 11 behind Watney.
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