Ben Fox of the US reaped the benefits of extra hours slogging it in the gym as he shot a sparkling eight-under-par 64 to share the first-round lead at the Zaykabar Myanmar Open yesterday.
Fox fired a flawless round with eight birdies that was matched by Australians Scott Hend, who has won once on the Asian Tour, and former European Tour player Wade Ormsby at the Royal Mingalardon Golf and Country Club.
Chinnarat Phadungsil of Thailand, a three-time Asian Tour winner, was a further shot back with Kim Gi-whan of South Korea in the US$300,000 event, the first of the Asian Tour season.
Photo: AFP
Fox, who is searching for his first Asian Tour victory, credited the hard work in the gym during the off-season for his fast start.
“I tried to get a little bit stronger in the gym and it is showing, because I’m hitting it 10 or 15 yards further this year,” the 24-year-old said.
Playing in his third year on the Asian Tour, Fox made a 25-foot chip-in birdie from the edge of the seventh hole to tie for the lead.
“It was one of my goals coming into the year to get off to a good start more frequently. Obviously, you just don’t plan on shooting eight-under, but it was a nice round,” he said.
Hend, who is among 15 Australians in the field, predicts a low-scoring week as he aims to end a three-year title drought.
“I missed a couple, but you can’t complain when you shoot an eight-under,” he said.
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