SOCCER
US end scoring drought
Jordan Morris ended the US scoring drought, gave Bruce Arena his first national team win in more than a decade and put himself in a position to make the roster for games that count. Morris scored in the 59th minute as the US beat Jamaica 1-0 in an exhibition game on Friday night to give Arena the first win of his second stint as national team coach. “Jordan Morris has made a statement,” said Arena, who earned his first victory as the US coach since an exhibition triumph over Latvia in May 2006. Benny Feilhaber took a 20m pass from Dax McCarty and played the ball to Morris with a back-heel pass. Morris returned the ball to Feilhaber, who was making his first start in five years. Feilhaber dribbled into the penalty area and pushed the ball back to Morris. The 22-year-old forward, last season’s Major League Soccer Rookie of the Year, took a touch and beat goalkeeper Ryan Thompson inside the near post with a right-footed shot from close range. It was the second international goal for Morris, who also scored against Mexico in an April 2015 exhibition, and ended a 280-minute US scoreless streak.
SOCCER
La Liga eyes No. 1 spot
Spanish clubs have cleaned up their finances and modernized their stadiums and can now go on to surpass even the huge earnings sloshing around the Premier League, La Liga president Javier Tebas said on Friday. Tebas said La Liga had the best clubs and the best players — among them Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi — and said that the Premier League needed to watch out. “We feel we can rival and even exceed the earnings of the Premier League,” Tebas said in Madrid, home of world player of the year Ronaldo and Champions League winners Real Madrid. “We have a strategic plan in place already and frankly if four years from now we are 15 percent behind the Premier League I’d be happy with that,” he said, adding however that La Liga’s ambitions went beyond that. Tebas said that club budgets were now under control throughout the league, teams had paid off tax debts and that four top-flight clubs were improving their stadiums. According to consulting firm Deloitte, English clubs generated 4.4 billion euros (US$4.7 billion) in the 2014-2015 season, compared with 2.05 billion for La Liga.
GOLF
Bowditch arrested over DUI
USPGA Tour player Steven Bowditch on Friday was arrested on suspicion of extreme DUI, getting out of jail soon enough to play in the Waste Management Phoenix Open in the afternoon. Scottsdale police said Bowditch had a blood-alcohol level of more than 0.2 percent when he was taken into custody at about 1am. Arizona’s legal limit is 0.08 percent. Responding to an emergency call report about a truck “swerving all over the road,” officers observed the vehicle sit through two greens lights without moving, and found the 33-year-old Australian asleep behind the wheel. Bowditch missed the cut in the tournament, shooting his second straight three-over 74. He issued a statement after meeting with PGA Tour officials following the round. “I would like to apologize to my family, friends and supporters, as well as the PGA Tour and Waste Management Phoenix Open for the incident reported today,” Bowditch said. “As I intend to fully cooperate with the authorities, I will not be making further comment at this stage.” South Korean An Byeong-hun had a share of the halfway lead in Arizona on Friday alongside Brendan Steele of the US.
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