Ochoa, Annika tied for lead
by The Associated Press on Oct. 13, 2006, under SportsPALM DESERT, Calif. – Michelle Wie didn’t exactly steal the show Thursday at the Samsung World Championship.
If anything, she held it up.
Starting her second year as a pro, Wie took a half-hour to play the 14th hole at Bighorn with two rulings, a whiff, an unplayable lie from a desert bush and a shot off the cart path just to get back to the fairway. She wound up with a quadruple-bogey 8 on the shortest par-4 at Bighorn, sending her to a 2-over-par 74.
The real show belonged to some familiar names on the LPGA Tour – ex-Arizona Wildcats Lorena Ochoa and Annika Sorenstam.
Both waited endlessly along the back nine for the Wie rulings, although it hardly affected their games. Ochoa fired off four birdies in five holes, and Sorenstam caught up with her in the final holes as both finished at 67 to share the lead.
Frys.com Open
LAS VEGAS – Bob Tway and Steve Flesch had 8-under rounds to share the first-round lead in the Frys.com Open.
Senior Women’s Amateur
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Diane Lang successfully defended her USGA Senior Women’s Amateur golf title, beating Anna Schultz 1-up at Sea Island Golf Club. Lang, the 51-year-old Jamaican-born player who lives in Weston, Fla., became the seventh woman to win consecutive titles in the tournament.
McEnroe wins in return
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – For once, doubles got a lot of attention at the Stockholm Open.
John McEnroe returned to the Royal Tennis Hall on Thursday – 21 years after his fourth and last singles title in the Swedish capital – and teamed with Jonas Bjorkman to beat Andreas Vinciguerra and Johan Landsberg 6-3, 6-2 in a first-round match.
“It’s nice to be back,” said McEnroe, who has fond memories of the small hall that was built in the 1930s and is the oldest arena on the ATP Tour built for tennis. “Playing Bjorn (Borg) . . . first time I played him was here. Obviously, he was the greatest rival I’ve ever had. I remember the noise the people made with their feet.”
An admittedly nervous McEnroe received a standing ovation when he came out to warmup, and the record crowd of 4,863 gave him another standing ovation after his team closed out the win. “Every match you get nervous,” he said. “When you don’t get nervous, you’re not even competing anymore.”
Among those watching in the sellout crowd were Borg, a five-time Wimbledon champion, and Stefan Edberg, another Hall of Famer who is the only player along with McEnroe to top both singles and doubles rankings in ATP history. “Bjorn was there, I saw Stefan, and lot of the other players came in, so it added to the excitement,” McEnroe said.
Johnson signs new deal
DALLAS – Mavericks coach Avery Johnson has signed a new, five-year, $20 million contract that will keep one of the NBA’s most successful young coaches in Dallas through 2011.
In his first full stint as head coach last season, the Mavericks reached the NBA Finals for the first time, losing to the Miami Heat in six games.
Johnson led Dallas to a 60-22 record last season after coaching the final 18 games in 2005 when Don Nelson stepped down.
More trouble for Kansas
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Citing academic fraud by a former graduate assistant football coach and a woeful compliance record under former athletic director Al Bohl, the NCAA extended Kansas’ self-imposed probation through October 2009.
Kansas had placed itself on two years’ probation following an investigation by the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions, but the committee extended that to three years Thursday and made more severe scholarship cuts than the school had hoped.
The committee cut three football scholarships and one in men’s basketball for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years.
