FOOTBALL
Bucs and Bears to play
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are to host the Chicago Bears as scheduled on Sunday, bringing NFL action back to Florida as the state grapples with damage from Hurricane Irma. More than 15 million people remained without electricity in Florida in the wake of the storm, which ravaged the Caribbean and the Florida Keys, but produced less damage than forecasters feared on the mainland of Florida. “We have been working tirelessly with the Tampa Sports Authority, as well as the NFL league office, to ensure that Raymond James Stadium would be available to host our season opener against the Chicago Bears this Sunday,” Buccaneers chief operating officer Brian Ford said in a statement on Tuesday. “Hosting the game is important to us, as Tampa Bay has been through a lot over the past few days. We look forward to providing our fans and the entire region an opportunity to come together this Sunday to kick off our 2017 season.”
RUGBY UNION
New competition planned
Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest is preparing to launch the Indo Pacific Rugby Championship, a six-team competition to begin in August next year. Forrest was behind a push to have the Western Force remain in Super Rugby, but the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) cut the Perth-based club from the competition for next season. The Force also lost an Australian Supreme Court attempt to have the union’s decision overturned. Perth is to be one of the teams in the new league, while Singapore has been mentioned as another. Forrest yesterday said he was in negotiations with the ARU to ensure players who compete in his competition will also be eligible to play Super Rugby and represent the Wallabies. Forrest said it would be in the ARU’s best interests to allow Wallabies players to feature in the new competition. Last month, Forrest called on Cameron Clyne to resign as ARU chairman over rugby’s national governing body’s decision to axe the Force from the revamped Super Rugby competition. However, the two men have since reconciled their differences and Forrest said his discussions with the ARU about the new competition had been positive. “There’s been a fair bit of water under the bridge with Cameron and I,” Forrest said. “We had a frank and friendly discussion when he was here recently, but now with the Western Force becoming an international team ... there should be nothing but collaboration on behalf of Australian rugby.”
GOLF
Shanghai event canceled
The LPGA on Tuesday canceled a tournament in Shanghai less than one month before it was due to be played after failing to get local government approval for the event. The Alisports LPGA tournament, won last year by seven-times LPGA Tour winner Kim In-kyung, was scheduled for Oct. 5 to Oct. 8. It is the second time in three years the tournament, previously known as the Reignwood LPGA Classic, has been scrapped. “Unfortunately, we have just received word that the tournament was unsuccessful in obtaining approval from the local district government,” LPGA commissioner Mike Whan said in a statement. “The hardest part about this news is that we have a title sponsor, a tournament operator, a TV production group and a host venue all set to go.”
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with