Plaza and Grasis win at City Tourney
It was a familiar way to finish the weekend for Gabe Plaza after four rounds at the Yuma City Championship Golf Tournament, while for the women’s championship the finish came with a dramatic ending.
Plaza won his seventh City Championship on Monday at Desert Hills, which ties a decades-old record. Meanwhile, Yuma Catholic junior Jordan Grasis won the women’s event for the first time in a sudden-death playoff against her highschool teammate Ali Schmunk.
“This is my home course. I’m very comfortable on it,” Plaza said. “I just had a good time. It’s Memorial Weekend, so you better have fun.”
Plaza ran away with the men’s tournament finishing with a final score of 281. He played consistently all weekend with two rounds below 70. He finished with a 73, 66, 73 and a 69 in his final round.
The win it gives him as many as Jay McCallister, who last won in 1996.
“I tied the record and that was my goal,” Plaza said. “Now it’s to put some more up there and hope somebody else can come after it.”
The second-place finisher in the men’s tournament was Gabe Rico with a final score of 291 and third place went to Grady Bourguignon at 295.
The 2017/2018 Yuma Sun/ Yuma Rotary Club Boys Golfer of the Year, David Ramirez, finished 11th at 326. The men’s field was made up of 77 golfers.
Grasis had to rally late to get her win. After three rounds she was tied with Schmunk at 231 shots each.
During the first hole of the sudden-death playoff, Grasis opened with a shot out-of-bounds on hole number one at Desert Hills. After recovering, her second shot went into the bunker just shy of the green.
She recovered nicely with a chip out of the sand trap and about a 15-foot put to stay alive.
“I was like, oh shoot,” Grasis said. “I’m not clutch for anything. I saw where my drive was and I used the nine iron with my shot to make a bogey. I pushed it into the bunker. It was the
HOUSTON — Stephen Curry and Golden State turned all those Houston bricks into a road back to the NBA Finals.
Needing not only all their firepower but also 27 straight misses by the Rockets during an epic cold streak from 3-point range, the Warriors rallied to keep alive their hopes for a repeat.
Kevin Durant scored 34 points, Curry sparked another third-quarter turnaround, and the Warriors earned a fourth straight trip to the NBA Finals by beating the Rockets 101-92 in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals on Mon-
LAS VEGAS — In a single nine-minute stretch of the third period, the Washington Capitals dramatically took the lead before the Vegas Golden Knights replied with two goals of their own. Washington’s Tom Wilson also flattened Vegas forward Jonathan Marchessault with a blindside hit that could reverberate through the Stanley Cup Final.
After 10 goals and a Final-record four lead changes overall in a fantastically entertaining opener, it’s tough to imagine what these unlikely opponents will do for an encore.
But the upstart Golden Knights have spent their entire inaugural season speeding past all expectations, and their first Final game didn’t slow them down in the slightest.
Tomas Nosek scored the tiebreaking goal midway through the third period, and the expansion Golden Knights surged past the Capitals for a 6-4 victory on Monday night.
“We put fun ahead of everything, and you can tell,” said Ryan Reaves, who scored the Knights’ tying goal in the third period. “Guys have are having fun and they’re smiling.”
The Eastern Conference champion Capitals hadn’t given up this many goals in 29 games since March 18, but they hadn’t seen anything like this charmed run by the upstart Knights. With its sellout crowd of hometown fans at deafening volume all night, Vegas put its usual speed and relentlessness on full display while overcoming that third-period deficit to win the opener of a matchup between two franchises seeking their first Stanley Cup titles.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 24 saves in an occasionally shaky performance, but the three-time Stanley Cup winner’s new teammates carried the goalie who has so often carried them with a relentless outburst of offense.
“We’re a good defensive group, but we weren’t tonight,” Marchessault said. “They’re a team that’s very fast in the neutral zone, and we gave them too much respect with the puck. We need to be faster in the defensive zone. We’re going to fix that in our game.”
The Game 1 winner has won the last six Cups and 61 of 78 overall.
Braden Holtby stopped 28 shots for the Capitals, whose first Stanley Cup Final game in 20 years was a defensive nightmare. Washington still played a strong offensive game and had chances to win, but never slowed the Knights.
“I think next game is going to be different, and all the nervousness, all the bad thing goes away in this game,” said captain Alex Ovechkin, who had an assist. “We just have to forget about it and bounce back (in the) next one.”
Wilson got credit for the goal that put the Caps up 4-3 early in the third period when Fleury back-heeled a loose puck into his own net, but Reaves evened it 91 seconds later for Vegas.
Nosek then put the Knights ahead after Shea Theodore kept the puck in Washington’s zone, sidestepped a defender and fired a beautiful cross-ice pass to the Czech forward, who buried a one-timer for his second goal of the playoffs.
Colin Miller, William Karlsson and Reilly Smith