Johnson in joint lead, Lahiri tied-27

PONTEVEDRA: Dustin Johnson, the world No. 1, hopes that a new putter and a new putting method will help turn around his fortunes at a premier golf championship that has mystified him for years.

Johnson got off to the right start at the Players Championship, taming the sometimes diabolical TPC Sawgrass to shoot a relatively breezy 6-under 66 and join five others with the Day 1 lead.

Joining Johnson atop the leaderboard were fellow US Open winner Webb Simpson, Chesson Hadley, Matt Kuchar, Patrick Cantlay and in-form Swede Alex Noren. a solid 3-under 69 to be Tied-27th even as the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass yielded a lot of low scores on the opening daylahiri, who exited last year with a disastrous 10 on the final Par-4 18th in the second round, got some revenge with a birdie on it. He had six birdies against three bogeys and was bogey-free on the tougher front stretch.

SATHIYAN SIGNS UP FOR GERMAN CLUB

NEWDELHI: India’s top table tennis player G Sathiyan, who won three medals at his Commonwealth Games debut last month, has signed with German Bundesliga’s top division club ASV Grunwettersbach Tischtennis.

He was also a part of the Indian men’s team that finished 13th, its best ever performance, in the World Team Championships in Sweden last week.

~75CR DEAL FOR INDIAN BADMINTON

NEW DELHI : In a big boost to badminton in India, the national federation has inked a ~75 crore deal with sports equipment manufacturer Yonex Sunrise, which will now supply equipments to BAI for all their tournaments, camps and academies in India.

TABLE TENNIS PLAYERS SHINE IN THAILAND

NEWDELHI:INDIA’S young table tennis players excelled in the SET Thailand Junior and Cadet Open, winning four bronze in team events in Bangkok on Thursday. The junior boys, spearheaded by Manav Thakkar, Manush Shah, Jeet Chandra and Snehit S made it to the medal rounds of this Golden Series event, a part of the 2018 ITTF World Junior Circuit. They recorded a hard-fought 3-1 victory over Singapore A.