GOLF
Hanoi tournament postponed
Vietnam’s return to top-level regional golf has been postponed until later this season in the latest unwanted development for the sport in Asia. Players have been told that next month’s inaugural Volvik-Sky Lake Vietnam Masters, set to be the richest played in the country, has been delayed. The US$500,000 tournament in Hanoi had been announced with some fanfare by the Asian Tour, which is predicting a “new boom” for professional golf in the country. No reason for the delay was given on the Asian Tour’s Web site. The Southeast Asian country last hosted an Asian Tour event five years ago in 2008. The hiccup follows the cancelation of an event on the rival OneAsia tour, as well as this year’s Singapore Open, usually one of the major events on the Asian calendar.
BASKETBALL
Cavaliers sign Bennett
The Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday signed Anthony Bennett, the No. 1 selection in the NBA draft in June last year. The Cavaliers did not release the terms of the deal, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported it is worth US$16.7 million over three years. Bennett entered the draft after being voted the top freshman in the Mountain West Conference last season, when he averaged 16.1 points, 8.1 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He made league history as the first Canadian-born player to be taken first in the draft. Bennett was born in Toronto and the scouts like him because he is a strong rebounder and has a nice scoring touch. The Cavaliers are hoping Bennett can help them forget about the loss of LeBron James, who fled the city for Miami following the 2010 season. Cleveland went 24-58 last season and have missed the playoffs for the past three seasons.
BASKETBALL
‘The Beast’ arrives in Athens
Chinese national team player Ping Shang arrived in Greece on Tuesday and took part in his new Panathinaikos team’s first practice session. “It is with great pleasure that I embrace being the first Chinese player on the team and I am thoroughly thrilled to be here,” the 29-year-old said. Ping becomes the first Chinese basketball player to play professionally in Europe, according to the Greek club. “Panathinaikos is the best team in Europe. I knew the team. I know that it has achieved everything and it is a dream come true to be getting to play for it,” Ping said. Ping was born in Harbin and stands 2.09m tall. He played college basketball in the US at Illinois Central Community College and then at Nebraska University. Due to his physical power, he was given the nickname “The Beast” in his university days.
RUGBY
Henson regrets brawl
Wales center Gavin Henson says he regrets the incident that saw him sent sprawling to the floor in a bar by a punch from Bath teammate Carl Fearns. The two players were warned and fined by English Premiership side Bath after Fearns hit Henson during a pre-season social event that took place just a month after the Welshman joined the club. Henson has challenged Fearns to a charity boxing match, but he said on Tuesday that he was eager to draw a line under the incident. “It wasn’t a great start to my Bath career and I’d like to put that behind me,” he told BBC Radio Bristol. “Hopefully I can get out on the field and people will see me as just a rugby player... I had a big headache that day and I went down quite easily. Maybe we will have a charity boxing match at the end of the year so I can get a bit of respect back.”
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