Second-round leader American Bobby Gates shot a one-under-par 71 in windy conditions to hold a one-stroke lead after the third round of the Australian PGA yesterday.
Gates, who will play on the US PGA tour next season after qualifying from the Nationwide tour this year, had a 54-hole total of 12-under-par 204. He made a 10-foot putt for par on the 18th after his approach missed the green.
Australian Aaron Townsend, who led for much of the back nine, bogeyed the final two holes to shoot 70 and was level in second with Peter Senior, a regular on the US Champions tour who shot 68.
Akio Sadakata of Japan was in a group tied for fourth after a 67, two behind Gates.
Gusting winds on the Coolum course kept the scores higher than the opening two rounds, with 42 double bogeys and eight triple bogeys or worse recorded by the cut-down field of 70 yesterday.
“This is a course where it’s difficult to avoid bogeys,” Gates said. “The first five holes were tough. I don’t think there was a stage where we knew what the wind was going to do, and if we did, it changed quickly.”
Townsend, who turned professional in 2003, has only two wins on the Australian secondary tour in his career.
The best round of the day came from Australian Steve Bowditch, who shot 66 and was the only player on the leaderboard who started off the 10th tee. Organizers sent yesterday’s groups off in threesomes off two tees because of threatened bad weather, but outside of a few early showers, the day was free of forecast thunderstorms.
Last week’s Australian Open winner Geoff Ogilvy shot 71 and defending champion Robert Allenby 72. Both were six strokes behind the leader.
Gates got an early gift from his two playing partners — Liang Wenchong of China and Australia’s John Senden, who trailed the American by one going into the third round — when both double-bogeyed the par-five first hole. Senden went into the water that lines the left of the fairway and Liang took two shots to get out of a greenside bunker.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later