Logano secures title bid with Kansas win
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Joey Logano spent the final 40- plus laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway keeping an eye on Kevin Harvick in his rearview mirror. Now he can look ahead to the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. Using every bit of the track to hold off Harvick, who has a series-leading nine wins this year, Logano took the checkered flag on a cold, blustery afternoon to secure one of the four championship-eligible spots in the final race. Harvick was followed across the finish line by Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman and Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski as postseason contenders swept the top four spots in the first of three races before the finale, a stretch that will whittle the playoff field that currently has eight drivers. “It’s on your mind every lap. You come into this race knowing if you win this thing, you have an amazing advantage,” said Logano, a 30-year-old Penske driver who experienced the same perk on his way to the 2018 title. Harvick, who won the 2014 season title, kept driving his Stewart- Haas Racing No. 4 car to fellow Ford driver Logano’s bumper after the final restart for a caution. He simply couldn’t make a pass stick as Logano moved all over the track to block him while also taking advantage of lapped traffic. Harvick’s second-place showing was good for his own championship hopes. He now has a 41- point cushion over the cut line with two races left before the finale, while Joe Gibbs Racing’ Denny Hamlin is 20 points above it after a mistake caused him to brush the wall and he wound up 15th. Hamlin was going for his third straight win at Kansas and his eighth win overall this year.
GOLF
› NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — In his 10th season and after his 233rd tournament, Jason Kokrak can finally call himself a PGA Tour winner. Kokrak earned every bit of it Sunday in the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek, where the 35-year- old American matched the best round of the tournament with an 8-under-par 64 to overcome a three-shot deficit entering the final day and win a back-nine duel with Xander Schauffele ( 66). Russell Henley, who led by three strokes after 54 holes, never got anything going early in the final round and fell behind when he bogeyed the par-5 seventh as Kokrak was on an early run of birdies. Kokrak, already in the field for this year’s Masters, qualified for the 2021 event with Sunday’s win. Henley’s hopes for victory ended on the reachable par- 4 11th when he drove over the green into thick rough and, facing a downhill chip, left it in the rough short of the green and made bogey on the second-easiest scoring hole at Shadow Creek. That put him four shots behind, and a late push of birdies was never going to be enough. He closed with a 70 and tied for third with Tyrrell Hatton (65), who was coming off a European Tour victory the weekend before in the BMW PGA Championship. Baylor School graduate Harris English, who played college golf with Henley, closed with a 68 to finish 10th at 10 under.
› RICHMOND, Va. — Phil Mickelson likes to play aggressively, and he found the PGA Tour Champions’ stop at the Country Club of Virginia the perfect place to begin his preparations for the Masters, postponed this year from April to November because of the coronavirus pandemic. Bombing drives like he will have to at Augusta National against the younger set from the PGA Tour, Mickelson shot a 7- under- par 65 and became the third player to win his first two starts on the 50- and- older tour. Mickelson slammed the door on Mike Weir with a back-nine surge Sunday in the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, finishing the 54-hole event at 17-under 199, one off the tournament record set by Miguel Angel Jimenez last year. Canada’s Weir, who shares left- handed hitting and senior circuit rookie status with Mickelson, struggled with the putter as he closed with a 71 to finish three shots behind Mickelson and one ahead of third- place Paul Goydos ( 65). The winner in late August at Ozarks National in Missouri in his first start on the PGA Tour Champions, Mickelson joined Bruce Fleischer (1999) and Jim Furyk (2020) as the only players to win their first two senior events.