Sportlight

Aug. 18

1923 - Helen Mills, 17, ends Molla Bjurstedt Mallory's domination of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships and starts her own with a 6-2, 6-1 victory.

1957 - Floyd Patterson knocks out Roy Harris in the 13th round at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to retain his world heavyweight title.

1994 - South Africa is introduced for the first time in 36 years during the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia. South Africa had been banned since 1958 because of its apartheid policies.

1995 - Dominique Moceanu, 13, becomes the youngest to win the national gymnastics championships senior women's all-around title in New Orleans.

2000 - Tiger Woods ties the 36-hole scoring record in the PGA Championship with a 5-under 67 to take a one-stroke lead over unheralded Scott Dunlap. Woods, at 11-under 133, ties the mark for relation to par last set by Mark O'Meara and Ernie Els in 1995.

2004 - Paul Hamm wins the men's gymnastics all-around Olympic gold medal by the closest margin. It is later discovered that a scoring error may have cost Yang Tae-young of South Korea the title. Yang, who finished with a bronze, is wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his secondto-last routine, the parallel bars. He finishes third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who becomes the first American man to win gymnastics' biggest prize.

2008 - A day after winning an Olympic gold medal in Beijing, Rafael Nadal unseats Roger Federer to become the No. 1 tennis player when the ATP rankings are released. Federer had led the rankings for 235 weeks.

2010 - Fresno State and Nevada announce they are leaving the Western Athletic Conference for the Mountain West.

2012 - Tina Charles has 23 points and nine rebounds to lead the Connecticut Sun to an 8574 victory over the New York Liberty. Charles becomes the fastest player in WNBA history to reach 1,000 rebounds, doing so in 89 games.

2013 - For the first time at the Solheim Cup, the Europeans leave the U.S. with the trophy. Caroline Hedwall becomes the first player in the tournament's 23 years to win all five matches. She finishes with a 1-up victory over Michelle Wie and gives Europe the 14 points it needed to keep the cup.

2013 - Usain Bolt is perfect again with three gold medals. The Jamaican great becomes the most successful athlete in the 30-year history of the world championships. The 4x100-meter relay gold erases the memories of the 100 title he missed out on in South Korea two years ago because of a false start. Bolt, who already won the 100 and 200 metres, gets his second such sprint triple at the world championships, matching the two he achieved at the Olympics. With his victory, Bolt moves to the top of the all-time world championships medals table with eight gold and two silver, edging Carl Lewis, who had eight gold, one silver and one bronze.