Sweden’s Alex Noren won the Wales Open by two strokes on Sunday to claim his second European Tour victory.
The second and third-round leader was never threatened as he closed with a one-under-par 70 for a nine-under 275 total, two better than Dane Anders Hansen and Frenchman Gregory Bourdy.
Although Noren hardly got into top gear during the first nine holes in soaking conditions at last year’s Ryder Cup course, his rivals never looked like catching him.
He had built a four-shot lead by the 12th, before making a rare mistake when finding a hazard on the 15th. A bogey when playing partner Hansen birdied, though, merely reduced his margin of a victory.
Noren’s only other title came in the 2009 European Masters in Switzerland and after pocketing the first prize the 28-year-old from Stockholm said why it had taken so long to win again.
“Last year was testing what I needed to do with my game,” he told reporters. “This year I’ve tried to improve my whole game. This is the result.”
Noren qualified for the US Open on May 30 and is looking forward to taking on the Congressional course next week when he makes his debut in the major.
Noren will hope to emulate the feat of Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell, who won in Wales last year and went on to clinch the US Open at Pebble Beach.
After his calamitous 81 of Saturday, McDowell finished well down the field in Wales, 12 shots behind the winner.
Sweden’s Peter Hanson (72) tied for fourth place, three behind Noren, along with compatriot Johan Edfors, Argentine Ricardo Gonzalez and Spaniard Pablo Larrazabal.
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