$10 MILLION UP FOR GRABS IN FEDEX CUP
ATLANTA» All 30 players who made it to the Tour Championship have a mathematical shot at the FedEx Cup and its $10 million prize.
That includes Pat Perez, the No. 11 seed, who calculated his own odds of winning.
“All the top guys would have to play bad, which they haven’t done all year,” Perez said Wednesday. “So for them to all do it at once, and me win, it’s about the same odds as the Powerball.”
These sobering words come from perhaps the happiest guy at East Lake.
Perez finished 40th on the money list in 2002, his rookie year. He never has come seriously close to losing his full PGA Tour card in 16 years. But it took him until now, at age 41, to reach the Tour Championship for the first time.
The top five seeds going into the Tour Championship — Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Marc Leishman and Jon Rahm — only have to win the tournament to capture the FedEx Cup. After that, the odds get slightly longer the lower the seed. Rory McIlroy won last year at No. 6.
Jim Furyk was the No. 11 seed at East Lake when he won the FedEx Cup in 2010, so it can be done. Bill Haas is the lowest seed to win at No. 25 in 2011.
Embiid not yet cleared for 76ers.
Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid has not been cleared for 5-on-5 drills and the team will take a cautious approach in his return from his injured left knee.
Embiid’s career has been riddled with injuries dating to his college career at Kansas and all three seasons with the Sixers. Embiid, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2014 draft, played only 31 games last season and had surgery in March to repair a torn meniscus in his knee.
High-schooler to sign with German soccer team.
Josh Sargent, a 17-yearold forward from O’Fallon, Mo., who has starred on U.S. youth teams, agreed to sign with Werder Bremen.
The German Bundesliga team said that Sargent will sign a professional contract on Feb. 20, his 18th birthday.
Sargent had four goals and one assist at this year’s Under-20 World Cup and is slated to be part of the American team at the Under-17 World Cup next month.
Expanded drug tests at UNM.
The University of New Mexico will be expanding drug and alcohol testing for its athletes.
Interim university president Chaouki Abdallah met with coaches Tuesday and announced the expanded program. University officials told the Albuquerque Journal that expanding the program was the right thing to do.
The new initiative will be an additional layer of testing that coaches already had the option of doing with their athletes, though each sport had to fund it out of its own budget. Most budgets at UNM have been frozen for several years.
Football and swimming were the only sports doing additional testing on a regular basis.
Footnotes.
St. Louis Blues forward Alexander Steen will miss the rest of training camp after suffering a left hand injury in the team’s first preseason game. The 33-year-old Steen was hurt against Dallas on Tuesday night and will be re-evaluated in three weeks. He is entering his 10th season with the Blues and coming off a year in which he had 16 goals and 35 assists in 76 games. … Undefeated heavyweights Deontay Wilder and Luis Ortiz will fight at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Nov. 4. The fight will be televised by Showtime as part of the Premier Boxing Champions series. It will be the sixth title defense for the 31-year-old WBC champion Wilder (38-0, 37 knockouts), and he’s already touting a potential matchup with Anthony Joshua after Ortiz. … The Portland Timbers signed 5-year-old goalkeeper Derrick Tellez to a one-game contract. Derrick, who is battling a cancerous brain tumor, was signed to grant his wish via Make-A-Wish Oregon.