China’s Feng on top, LPGA season begins

World No. 1 seeks 2nd major crown

MIAMI, Jan 24, (AFP): World number one Feng Shanshan of China, who won twice in the final five weeks of the 2017 campaign, remains the woman to beat when the 2018 LPGA season opens Thursday.

The 28-year-old from Guangzhou became the first golfer from China, man or woman, to reach the world number one spot, doing so last November after winning the Japan Classic and Blue Bay LPGA title in British Open winner, rounding out the top five.

Thompson lost a playoff to US compatriot Brittany Lincicome to drop last year’s Bahamas season opener, one of three playoffs in which she was beaten in 2017, including at the ANA Inspiration, the season’s first major tournament.

Rule changes have ended the chance for the controversy that derailed Thompson’s bid for a second career major win, when a television viewer saw a violation and a day-later penalty of four strokes was imposed with six holes to play Sunday.

As much as Thompson wants to add another major to her trophy case, this could be the third consecutive season in which the five women’s major titles are won by five different players.

American Danielle Kang won last year’s Women’s PGA Championship and Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist captured the Evian Championship.

And Feng, the 2016 Rio Olympic bronze medalist, seeks her second major crown, the first coming at the 2012 Women’s PGA Championship, then known as the LPGA Championship.

It was Feng’s first top-10 major finish. She has had 13 more since then, including three last year, the best of those a share of fifth at the US Women’s Open. Feng shared runner-up honors at the 2014 Women’s British Open. won’t be eligible for those exemptions because he plans to turn pro after the Masters.

“After I wake up, walking to my car I say to myself, ‘Let’s make our last round of golf as an amateur a good round.’ That gave me a lot of foundation to shoot a low round,” Niemann said. “Now I keep amateur until the Masters.”

It was the third time in four years that a Chilean has won the Latin American America. Gana won in a playoff last year over Ortiz and Niemann in Panama City, and Matias Dominguez won in 2015 in Buenos Aires.

Niemann attended the Masters last year with Toto Gana, and he plans to return the favor by bringing Gana as a guest this year.

The previous three Latin America Amateur champions have failed to make the cut at the Masters, a trend that Niemann hopes to change.

“I feel ready,” said Niemann, who qualified for the US Open last year at Erin Hills and missed the cut.

Trailing by one shot to Ortiz to start the final round, Niemann tied for the lead with one fortuitous bounce. His drive on the reachable par-4 eighth hole caromed off a tree, through the bunker and onto the green to set up an eagle. They were tied going to the back nine, where Niemann took the lead with a birdie on No. 10, and then expanded his lead to three shots with a birdie at No. 11 as Ortiz made bogey. Niemann birdied two of the next three holes to pull away.

Niemann said he would have turned pro if he had earned status in the Web.com Tour qualifying tournament last year. Instead, he remained an amateur and received quite the payoff. He’s going to Augusta National, where he hopes to play a practice round with Masters champion Sergio Garcia and perhaps Tiger Woods. bat on a hard, well-grassed pitch in cool, overcast conditions. As in the first two Tests, Kohli was batting early in the innings after both openers were dismissed inside the first nine overs.

While Pujara played a dogged, defensive innings, Kohli attacked when the bowlers strayed in line or length.

Pujara took 54 balls to score his first runs and battled for 261 minutes and 179 balls, hitting eight boundaries, before he was caught behind off the medium-paced Andile Phehlukwayo.

Two dropped catches and a wicket overturned because of a no-ball hampered South Africa on a day when the bowlers were able to extract considerable sideways movement off the pitch.

Kohli, who made his runs off 106 balls with nine fours, was the beneficiary of both dropped catches. He was put down when he had 11 by Philander off Rabada and on 32 by De Villiers at third slip off Morkel.

De Villiers made amends when he held a sharp chance off Lungi Ngidi to end Kohli’s innings’ but South Africa’s star batsman did not field after tea while receiving ice treatment on a bruised right middle finger suffered when he held the catch.

Philander took the first wicket when he had Lokesh Rahul caught behind South Africa’s bowler Lungi Ngidi, bowls on the first day of the third cricket Test match between South Africa and India at the Wanderers Stadium in

Johannesburg, South Africa on Jan 24. (AP) and bowled a remarkable first spell of one for one in eight overs. He was later denied a second wicket when Ajinkya Rahane, on three, edged him to wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock, only to get a reprieve when replFast bowlers dominate first dayys showed he had overstepped the bowling crease.

Rahane made only six more runs before he was leg before wicket to Morkel shortly before tea.

Pujara faced 31 balls without scoring a run in Philander’s first spell and was beaten several times as well as surviving an unsuccessful review for a leg before wicket decision which showed the ball hitting the bails in the ‘umpire’s call’ zone.