World No. 1 Yani Tseng of Taiwan, coming off her 11th victory of the year last week in China, will not accept an offer to play in the PGA Puerto Rico Open, Golfweek reported on Wednesday.
Tseng, whose seven LPGA titles this season include two major triumphs, said she would like to test herself against the top men’s players in a US PGA event.
Sidney Wolf, general chairman of the US PGA Puerto Rico Open, told the magazine he was ready to offer the top women’s golfer on the planet a berth in the March event, held opposite a World Golf Championships tournament at Doral.
However, Tseng, the youngest golfer to reach five career major titles at 22, will decline the pitch, according to Ernie Huang, an adviser for Tseng who spoke to Golfweek in a report on its Web site and said Tseng will not play in a PGA event “in the near future.”
“We appreciate that Puerto Rico has responded so soon, but she has more goals to accomplish, such as completing the Grand Slam and qualifying for the Hall of Fame,” Huang said. “To play on the PGA Tour now will be too much distraction for her.”
Swedish former World No. 1 Annika Sorenstam and US star Michelle Wie have played in US PGA events, but neither was able to make the cut.
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