Harris English grabbed the clubhouse lead, while world No. 1 Tiger Woods struggled on Thursday until darkness halted the first round of the storm-hit World Golf Championships Cadillac Championship.
English fired a three-under 69 and was among only six players to complete 18 holes at Doral’s revamped Blue Monster course, where a severe storm stopped play in the afternoon.
Four others — Italy’s Francesco Molinari, and Americans Jason Dufner, Hunter Mahan and Patrick Reed — were still on the course at three-under when darkness fell.
Dufner had two holes to finish, while Molinari had three, Mahan had four and Reed had seven remaining.
“I really started hitting my driver well. That first nine was really tough. The wind got going,” English said. “I kind of got rolling early on the second side.”
Woods, who withdrew from the final round in last weekend’s PGA Tour Honda Classic with back spasms, shared 47th on two-over when play was halted, having just made a bogey at the par-five 10th by missing an eight foot putt.
Woods, who made eight pars and a bogey on the front nine, showed no sign of pain, but faced 26 holes yesterday.
“Should be a long day for all of us,” Woods said. “Hopefully, I can get back out there in the morning, play well and work back to even-par by the end of the first round, then shoot a low one in the afternoon.”
Reigning Masters champion Adam Scott, who can overtake Woods for the world No. 1 ranking with a win this weekend, was two-under after 10 holes.
Among those with Scott in a share of sixth were South Africans Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen, and Americans Zach Johnson, Russell Henley, Matt Kuchar and Dustin Johnson.
Rory McIlroy was enduring a roller-coaster day that saw him with five birdies and four bogeys to stand one-under with four holes remaining.
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