Kenny Perry and Sean O’Hair birdied five of the last six holes in the final-round scramble on Sunday to win the Franklin Templeton post-season golf event by one stroke.
The duo combined for a 12-under 60 to finish at 31-under-par 185.
O’Hair won this event for the first time, while Perry won for the third time with his third different partner and at 52 became the oldest winner in the event.
He won with John Huston in 2005 and Scott Hoch in 2008.
“All three have been different,” Perry said of his Shootout victories. “John and I were pretty even partners, and then the year Scott and I won, I played fantastic that week ... This year, my roles have been reversed, and I was complementing Sean.”
“I think that was kind of the best thing about this was just we had a ton of fun, just like being a kid enjoying what you’re doing,” O’Hair added.
Hosted by Aussie great Greg Norman, the tournament features 24 golfers playing in two-man teams in a mixed-format of modified alternate shot, better ball and scramble.
Perry and O’Hair, who led by two strokes going into the final round, will share US$750,000 of the US$3 million total purse.
South Africa’s Rory Sabbatini and the US’ Charles Howell threatened with a back-nine surge that included an eagle on a par-four, but even combining for a final-round 57 they came up short on 186.
“We played really well and gave ourselves a lot of opportunities,” Sabbatini said. “We put a good number up there and that’s all we can really do.”
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