Charl Schwartzel took a three-shot lead into the final round of the European Tour’s season-opening Alfred Dunhill Championship after a 2-under 70 moved him to 13-under-par on Saturday.
Schwartzel has returned to form at one of his favorite tournaments, which he has won three times previously.
He also has four second-place finishes there.
Should Schwartzel hold on to his lead, he will become the first South African to win a European Tour event four times.
The South African was ahead of French pair Benjamin Hebert and Sebastien Gros at the Leopard Creek Country Club.
Schwartzel, the 2011 US Masters champion, opened up a five-shot lead after two rounds. He was pegged back by a bogey on his opening hole on Saturday, but that was the only dropped shot of his round.
Having just avoided the cut, defending champion Branden Grace carded a 6-under 66 to surge up to a tie for ninth.
Grace put himself in contention for a strong finish to his title defense after making birdies on four of his last six holes.
Rookie Gros was playing just his seventh round on the European Tour, but his scintillating round of 63 with nine birdies gave him a chance of a maiden tour title.
South African Dylan Frittelli was fourth on 8-under, while David Drysdale, Joost Luiten, Gregory Bourdy and Lasse Jensen share fifth, another shot 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
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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