Henrik Stenson moved into contention at the BMW International on Thursday, forgetting his traumatic US Open where he described the Chambers Bay greens as like “putting on broccoli.”
The world No. 7 Swede shared the first round lead at the US Open before slumping to a 27th-place finish, aiming his anger at the controversial greens at the Pacific Northwest course.
However, the easygoing Eichenried Golf Club in Munich was more to his taste, as he fired a five-under-par 67, two shots off the lead held by Rafael Cabrera-Bello of Spain, England’s Daniel Gaunt and Denmark’s Lasse Jensen.
Stenson could have been one shot better off at the ninth hole when he pulled his approach left of the green and saw it bounce off a cart path into a hospitality tent.
After receiving a free drop, Stenson pitched to eight feet, but was unable to convert the birdie chance.
“I was in a good position to finish with five in a row, but I think the wind switched a little bit and I was in between clubs and went with the longer club and ended up way in the grandstand,” Stenson said.
Cabrera-Bello continued his recent good form. The Spaniard was fourth in Ireland, 13th in Sweden and runner-up in Austria last time out.
On Thursday, the 31-year-old carded a seven-under-par 65 after mixing four birdies with two bogeys in an outward 34.
The two-time European Tour winner added five further birdies, including getting up and down from the back bunker at the last.
Gaunt, a two-time winner on the Challenge Tour, also birdied his final hole — the ninth — as he holed a 20-foot putt to complete a round containing eight birdies against a single bogey.
Jensen has only had one top-ten finish to date on the European Tour, but the Qualifying School graduate produced a flawless display that included four successive birdies around the turn.
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
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