A well-rested Fredrik Jacobson stormed into a one-stroke lead at the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament after the Swede shot a bogey-free 66 in the second round at the Sheshan International Club yesterday.
The 37-year-old followed up an opening 67 with another impressive round to post an 11-under halfway total, one clear of former Open winner Louis Oosthuizen, who produced a brilliant nine-under 63, and Australia’s Adam Scott.
Overnight leader, USPGA champion Keegan Bradley, was five shots worse in his second round, but he still managed a solid two-under 70 to sit alone in fourth place on nine-under for the tournament.
Jacobson, who has one victory in eight years on the USPGA Tour, warmed up for this week’s event in Malaysia last week, where he admitted his golf had been upset by a lack of sleep.
However, now fully adjusted to the Asian time zones, the Swede is confident he can add to the Travellers Championship title he won in June.
“In Malaysia, I had a hard time with the sleep and jetlag,” he told reporters. “I was sleeping in shifts of two hours here and three hours there. It was difficult to deal with a 12-hour time change.”
Jacobson said he had certainly benefited from the softer Sheshan greens after a violent overnight thunderstorm and the more receptive putting surfaces certainly suited Oosthuizen, as the South African recorded the first 63 of his career.
Taiwan’s Chan Yih-shin shot a 74 for a five-over total after two rounds.
Asian interest over the weekend will center around Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee, who moved to within four shots of Jacobson with a 69, despite struggling with a neck injury which required a physio season before his round.
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