■ Tennis
Serena Williams injured
Venus Williams defeated injured sister Serena 6-4, 7-5 in an exhibition match in Auburn Hills, Michigan on Thursday. Serena was clearly limited by the abdominal-muscle injury sustained earlier in the week in the WTA Championship final with Wimbledon champ Maria Sharapova. Her serve was noticeably weakened, and she grimaced after several shots, but still was competitive. "It's strange, because when the serves are that slow, it throws off your pace and makes it difficult," Venus said. "She was throwing all kind of tricky serves at me because she couldn't hit it hard." Venus also struggled with her serve early -- double faulting twice while losing the match's first game -- but rallied to win the first set. Serena almost forced a tiebreaker in the second set, but finally double faulted on match point to give her sister the win.
■ Auto Racing
Molson Indy cancelled
The Molson Indy Vancouver race was cancelled on Thursday after 15 years. "The bottom line is the business model couldn't work," said Jo-Ann McArthur, president of sponsoring Molson Sports and Entertainment. "We talked to a number of business partners over the last few months to try to make it happen." The race was not listed on the Champ Car schedule for next year, but the decision by Molson means there is no chance it will be added. Part of the downtown city street course used for the race will be developed for the athletes' village for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
■ Golf
Knoxville course planned
Greg Norman helped break ground on Thursday on a US$500 million golfing community in Loudon County near Knoxville, Tennessee. The 580-hectare Tennessee National is being developed with John "Thunder" Thornton of Chattanooga. Thornton, a University of Tennessee trustee and one of the school's biggest donors, has envisioned a course that could be home to UT's golf teams. The project will feature 1,700 home sites, a recreation center, tennis courts, parks, walking trails, a marina and the area's first Norman-designed golf course. "This is a wonderful piece of property," Norman said. "The topography of the site allows us to situate the golf course in the natural valley of the community." Thornton, who has a successful real estate development in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, acquired the property in 2000 from Eastman Chemical reportedly for US$10 million.
■ Soccer
Club president gets fined
The president of a football club in Moldova was fined Thursday for developing road rage on the pitch when he jumped into his jeep and tried to run over a referee who awarded a penalty against his team. Mikhail Makayev, president of the first division side Roso, was fined the equivalent of US$2,000 for the incident in a match against the capital city's Poitekhnik. Makayev drove his car after the astonished referee for several minutes until the latter climbed up into the stands. The match was abandoned in the first half and Poitekhnik awarded an automatic 3-0 win.
Tallon Griekspoor on Friday stunned top seed Alexander Zverev 4-6, 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (7/4) in the second round at Indian Wells, avenging a devastating loss to the German at Roland Garros last year. Zverev, the world No. 2 who is heading the field of the prestigious ATP Masters event with No. 1 Jannik Sinner serving a three-month drugs ban, is the first Indian Wells men’s top seed to lose his opening match since Andy Murray in 2017. It was a cherished win for Griekspoor, who had lost five straight matches — including four last year — to the German. That included a five-setter
Five-time champion Novak Djokovic on Saturday tumbled out of the Indian Wells ATP Masters, falling in his first match to lucky loser Botic van de Zandschulp as two-time defending champion Carlos Alcaraz advanced. “No excuses for a poor performance,” 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic said after 37 unforced errors in a 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 defeat. “It doesn’t feel great when you play this way on the court,” he said. “But congratulations to my opponent — just a bad day in the office, I guess, for me.” Djokovic is just the latest in Van de Zandschulp’s string of superstar victims. He
Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday held their nerve to beat Liverpool 4-1 on penalties and reach the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals after their tie finished one-apiece on aggregate, while Bayern Munich saw off Bayer 04 Leverkusen to complete a 5-0 win over both legs. Lamine Yamal and Raphinha fired Barcelona into the next round as the Catalans bested SL Benfica 3-1, and Inter booked a last-eight meeting with Bayern by seeing off Feyenoord 2-1. At Anfield, Ousmane Dembele netted the only goal of the night as PSG bounced back from Liverpool’s late winner last week to force the tie to extra-time and penalties. Maligned
The Taoyuan Pauian Pilots last night lost their East Asia Super League (EASL) championship game against Japan’s Hiroshima Dragonflies 72-68. They on Friday secured Taiwan’s first-ever spot in an EASL final with a 71-64 comeback victory over Japan’s Ryukyu Golden Kings. In what the EASL official Web site described as an “upset,” Pilots forward Lu Chun-hsiang on Friday asserted his stardom in Macau by scoring a game-high 24 points, with four players in both teams reaching double figures. The win was also the first time a Taiwanese franchise has defeated a Japanese team in the EASL Final Four. “I was moved
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