Fellow Northern Irishmen and Ryder Cup colleagues Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy on Friday set themselves up to meet in a mouth-watering Volvo World Match Play Championship last 16 clash to be played yesterday.
McDowell, the US Open champion, topped his group when he followed up his win over British Open Champion Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa with a last green victory against Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas.
McIlroy, who defeated South Africa’s Retief Goosen by one hole in his Thursday opener, slumped to a shock 3 and 2 loss to Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts.
“Rory beats me every time we play together,” said McDowell. “But this isn’t the Northern Ireland match play championship and I’m hoping it’s going to be different. It’s the Volvo World Match Play and the pressure is on.”
MADEIRA ISLANDS
AFP, MADEIRA, PORTUGAL
Ireland’s Simon Thornton carded a second round 66 for a one shot lead at the halfway stage of the Madeira Islands Open on Friday.
The 33-year-old leads from France’s Frangois Delamontagne, with overnight leader Chris Gane and his English compatriot Jamie Elson tied for third on five under.
“I played well, and I drove and putted well in worse conditions yesterday,” Thornton said. “I just hit lots of fairways and my putter’s hot at the moment so it was a good round today.”
Gane was level par for the day, but still pleased with his work over the first two days.
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