Horschel beats Day in a playoff
Billy Horschel won the AT&T Byron Nelson with a par on the first playoff hole Sunday after Jason Day pulled his four-foot par putt left and past the hole.
The miss by Day almost wasn’t even needed for Horschel, whose 36-foot birdie chance was rolling toward the center of the cup before stopping just short.
Horschel won for the fourth time on the PGA Tour and for the first time since taking the 2014 Tour Championship for the FedEx Cup title.
With a one-under 69, including a 60-foot birdie putt at the 14th hole, Horschel matched Day at 12-under 268. Day shot a 68. Third-round leader James Hahn finished one stroke back.
The playoff wrapped up the tournament’s 35th and final edition in Irving, Texas. The event will shift next year to the new links-style Trinity Forest Golf Club south of downtown Dallas.
Defending champion Bernhard Langer pulled away from the other contenders — and pulled even with Jack Nicklaus — in winning the Regions Tradition at Birmingham, Ala., shooting an eight-under 64 to match Nicklaus’ record of eight PGA Tour Champions major titles.
The 59-year-old German finished at 20-under 268 for a fivestroke victory over Scott McCarron (69) and Scott Parel (70) after winning last year by six shots.
Lexi Thompson shot a sixunder 65 to finish off a wire-towire victory in the Kingsmill Championship at Williamsburg, Va., with a tournament-record 20-under 264 total.
In securing her eighth LPGA Tour title, Thompson broke the tournament record of 19 under set by Annika Sorenstam in 2008. In Gee Chun finished second, five shots back.
UCLA’s softball team defeated Cal State Fullerton 9-1 to win the NCAA’s Los Angeles Regional and advance to a super regional. The Bruins, who hosted the regional, will play Mississippi next week in a best-of-three series with a berth in the College World Series at stake.
The USC women’s golf team is in seventh place after the second round of the NCAA championships in Sugar Grove, Ill. The top eight teams after Monday’s round will advance to match play to determine the national title. Northwestern is in first place at 23 over par, eight strokes ahead of Kent State. USC is 42 over, one stroke ahead of eighth-place Miami and two ahead of ninth-place Arizona State and Texas.
Scott Dixon of New Zealand won the Indianapolis 500 pole for the third time, recording the fastest four-lap qualifying average in 21 years. His speed of 232.164 mph was the best since Arie Luyendyk’s track record of 236.986 in 1996. Ed Carpenter, who finished second at 231.664, and defending race champion Alexander Rossi will join Dixon on the front row this Sunday.
Dale Coyne Racing announced that James Davison will replace Sebastien Bourdais, who suffered multiple fractures in his pelvis and a fractured right hip when he crashed Saturday.
Ron Capps raced to his fourth consecutive funny car victory, winning at the NHRA Heartland Nationals in Topeka, Kan. Antron Brown won in top fuel, Tanner Gray in pro stock.
Sweden won the ice hockey world championship with a 2-1 victory on penalties over twotime defending champion Canada in Cologne, Germany. Sweden goaltender Henrik Lundqvist stopped three penalty shots and Ryan O’Reilly hit the post for Canada. Nicklas Backstrom and Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored shootout goals for the Swedes, who won their first title since 2013. The score was tied 1-1 after overtime.
Former Alabama football coach Gene Stallings said he is recovering from a stroke that he suffered Thursday. Stallings, 82, was coach at Alabama from 199096. His 1992 team won a national championship.
In soccer, Real Madrid won the Spanish league for the first time in five years, defeating Malaga 2-0 to secure its 33rd league title and prevent rival Barcelona from winning its third in a row . . . . Juventus clinched a record sixth straight title in Italy’s Serie A with a 3-0 victory over Crotone.
Naoya Inoue of Japan retained his WBO super-flyweight title for the fifth time with a thirdround knockout of Ricardo Rodriguez of the U.S. in Tokyo. Inoue improved to 13-0 with 11 knockouts. Rodriguez is 16-4.