Kyle Stanley shoots a 64 to take the first-round lead in the Tour Championship.
ATLANTA — Kyle Stanley and Jordan Spieth got off to strong starts in the Tour Championship with entirely different goals in mind.
Stanley ran off four consecutive birdies on the front nine — one of them from 40 feet — and then added two more late in his round on a steamy Thursday afternoon at East Lake for a 6-under-par 64. In his Tour Championship debut, he had a two-stroke lead over a group that included U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka.
Spieth had a 67 and, while it was a grind, he had no gripes about that.
He is the No. 1 seed in the FedEx Cup, and no one from the top five had a lower score. That kept Spieth on track in his bid to join Tiger Woods as the only two-time winners of the $10 million bonus since the FedEx Cup began in 2007.
The top five seeds only have to win the Tour Championship to claim the FedEx Cup, though there have been three occasions where someone else won and walked away with golf’s biggest payoff when the leading players faltered.
PRO BASKETBALL Rockets to sign ex-Viper Johnson
The Rockets will sign former Rio Grande Valley Vipers standout Chris Johnson to a one-year contract, a person with knowledge of the deal said.
Johnson, a 6-6 forward who has played with Memphis, Philadelphia, Utah and Milwaukee, had a strong showing with the Rockets’ summer league team in Las Vegas this season. In four seasons with the Vipers, he averaged 14.6 points on 48.2-percent shooting and 5.5 rebounds.
BOXING Unbeaten Ward decides to retire
Andre Ward decided to end his career on top.
Ward announced he is retiring from boxing because he no longer has the desire to fight, leaving the sport at age 33 with an undefeated record and the light heavyweight championship.
Ward released a statement on his website titled “Mission Accomplished “thanking those who helped him throughout his career and explaining his reasons for his retirement.
“I want to be clear — I am leaving because my body can no longer put up with the rigors of the sport and therefore my desire to fight is no longer there,” he wrote.
Ward has won all 32 of his fights, with 16 knockouts. He won the Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight in 2004. Ward won the World Boxing Association super middleweight title in 2009 when he defeated Mikkel Kessler and unified that title in 2011 when he beat Carl Froch in the Super Six super middleweight tournament final.
Ward then battled shoulder problems that kept him out of the ring and later went 19 months without a fight because of a protracted legal dispute with his former promoter — the late Dan Goosen.
Ward got back in the ring in June 2015. He won the light heavyweight title in a disputed, unanimous decision against Sergey Kovalev in November 2016, taking all three belts in the process. Ward then beat Kovalev more decidedly in a rematch in June that was stopped in the eighth round.
MISCELLANEOUS Mondesi handed 8-year sentence
Former Los Angeles Dodgers star Raul Mondesi was sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted of embezzlement during his term as mayor of his hometown in the Dominican Republic.
The district court of San Cristobal, a town west of the capital Santo Domingo, also ordered that Mondesi pay a $1.3 million fine.
The Attorney General’s office charged Mondesi of embezzling $6.3 million while he was mayor of San Cristobal from 2010-16, according to the court.
Mondesi, 46, debuted with the Dodgers in 1993 and won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 1994. The onetime All-Star and two-time Gold Glove outfielder played seven seasons with Los Angeles and also played with Toronto, the New York Yankees, Atlanta, Arizona and Pittsburgh.
He retired from the majors in 2005 with .273 average and 271 home runs in 13 seasons.