South Korea’s Noh Seung-yul played his way into next week’s US Open by winning Monday’s qualifying event in Springfield, Ohio, while Taiwanese amateur Pan Cheng-tsung also qualified on a busy final day of booking spots in the major.
Spain’s Sergio Garcia was also among those from 10 other sites who booked their trip to next week’s second major tournament of the year at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland.
Noh fired back-to-back 66s to finish on 132 and lead the field by three strokes for one of two spots on offer to play in the Washington suburbs next week.
Garcia was among four qualifiers from a seven-man playoff for the last spots in Memphis, joining Sweden’s Fredrik Jacobson and South Korea’s Kang Sung-hoon as non-US players advancing.
Canada’s David Hearn and Argentine amateur Emiliano Grillo lost in the Memphis playoff.
In qualifying in Summit, New Jersey, Geoffrey Sisk of the US set the pace on 137, but England’s Matt Richardson, Taiwan’s Pan and Brazil’s Alex Rocha reached the US Open field by each finishing one stroke off the pace.
Canada’s Jon Mills finished one stroke back of Kirk Triplett in qualifying at Woodmont Country Club near the US Open course, but made next week’s field, as did US veteran Fred Funk, who turns 55 two days before the US Open begins.
Brandt Jobe of the US, runner-up by one stroke to Steve Stricker at the USPGA Memorial on Sunday, matched fellow American Chez Reavie for medalist honors in Columbus, Ohio.
Others who qualified from the shadow of the Jack Nicklaus-hosted event included Australians John Senden, Nick O’Hern and Marc Leishman.
Australia’s Greg Chalmers also made it, beating Michael Whitehead of the US in a playoff for the last spot available in Dallas, while Canadians Adam Hadwin and Wes Heffernan qualified in Bremerton, Washington.
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