Chris Wood set the pace at the Wales Open on Thursday with a superb six-under 65 in the first round at Celtic Manor.
Wood hopes to force himself into the reckoning for a Ryder Cup debut on this course in October and the Englishman established an early one-stroke lead over Australian Andrew Dodt and Welshman Bradley Dredge.
Englishman Richard McEvoy had been within a stroke of Wood, but dropped a shot to be two strokes adrift along with a trio of other players.
RECOVERING
Wood looks like recovering from the disappointment of Wentworth two weeks ago, when he led the European Tour’s flagship PGA Championship with a round to go and then crashed to a 77.
He was quickly into his stride with three birdies in his first eight holes and then picked up further strokes at the fourth, seventh and eighth.
The 22-year-old, fifth and third in the last two Open Championships, had a chance to add another on the long ninth, but his putt lipped out.
RUNNER-UP
Dredge was runner-up in the event three years ago, but that was on another of the courses at the venue.
A victory on the lay-out where the US will defend the Ryder Cup would be a huge feather in his cap as he pursues what he calls a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to play in the match on home soil.
He was four-under after nine, failed to get up and down from a bunker on the sixth, but birdied the next two like Wood.
CAPTAIN
European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie had one of his better rounds of the season, shooting a one-under 70, though he was unable to match the shot of the first round from playing partner Alvaro Quiros.
The Spanish Open champion won a magnum of champagne for holing in one with a six-iron at the third.
Simon Khan, returning to tournament action after his life-changing PGA Championship victory, finished on level-par having dropped a shot in the final two holes.
Last Sunday’s Madrid Masters victor Luke Donald — who had blown his chance to win at Wentworth with a double-bogey at the penultimate hole — did not fare as well shooting a 75.
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