Italy’s Edoardo Molinari defeated Robert Karlsson of Sweden on the second play-off hole to win the Dunlop Phoenix men’s golf tournament yesterday.
Molinari’s approach shot left him a one-meter birdie putt while Karlsson had 4m for a birdie on the hole.
Karlsson missed the shot and then Molinari duly sank it for the victory, which brought him the winner’s check of ¥40 million (US$444,000).
“I think I played very well today. Also congratulations for Robert, because he played some fantastic golf,” said Molinari, who is 18 and the top money earner on the European challenge tour this season.
“Today it was a hard round till the end and I was lucky to come out on top,” he said.
Starting the day with a one-stroke lead over Karlsson, Molinari carded two birdies and Karlsson four birdies on the front nine.
Karlsson, who last season became the first Swede to be the top money earner on the European tour, added two more birdies on the back nine, but Molinari birdied the 11th, 13th and 15th holes to catch up with the Swede.
Both had a chance to finish off before the play-off, with Karlsson’s birdie putt stopping at the edge of the cup on the 17th hole and the two narrowly missing birdie putts on the 18th hole.
Molinari ended the round with five birdies for a 66 and Karlsson six birdies for a 65 for the four-round total of 13-under-par 271.
Shane Lowry of Ireland shared third place with Japan’s Hirofumi Miyase on 277.
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