Poulter looking to make his mark again at Birkdale
SOUTHPORT, England — Ian Poulter earned his way back to Royal Birkdale on Tuesday and the footprints he left behind a decade ago at the British Open.
Poulter shot rounds of 70 and 68 at Woburn Golf Club, his home club and one of five final qualifying sites. He earned one of three spots available from each of the sites.
“Job done today,” Poulter tweeted.
Poulter had his best major at Royal Birkdale in 2008 when he was runnerup to Padraig Harrington. He holed a 15-foot par putt on the final hole that he thought might be enough to get into a playoff until Harrington pulled away with a strong finish marked by a 5-wood he hit to within 4 feet for eagle on the 17th hole. Harrington won by four shots.
Poulter left his own indelible mark at Royal Birkdale. He worked so hard on his putting that week that he stood for hours in the same spot on the putting green on the eve of the championship, so long that it killed the grass beneath his shoes and a brown shade of footprints was left behind.
BASKETBALL Wilt defender Imhoff dies at 78
Darrall Imhoff, the All-America center who led California to the 1959 NCAA basketball championship, played on a gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team in 1960 and then had a long career in the NBA, died Friday in Bend, Ore. He was 78.
The Portland Trail Blazers, the last of the six NBA teams for which he played, said the cause of death was a heart attack.
The New York Knicks, seeking a center to help them compete against Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics and Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors, selected Imhoff as the third overall pick in the 1960 NBA draft.
But Imhoff was a disappointment as a Knicks player. He was remembered mostly as the starting center who faced Chamberlain when he scored 100 points against the Knicks in a March 1962 game at Hershey, Pa.
“I only played the first 10 minutes of the game and the first 10 minutes of the fourth quarter before I fouled out,” Imhoff once told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Somebody else was responsible for the other 28 minutes.”
MISCELLANEOUS Skeeters lose fifth in a row
Southern Maryland parlayed four sixthinning hits into two runs and held on to defeat Sugar Land 2-1 in Atlantic League play at Waldorf, Md. Hector Olivera’s second-inning home run was one of only four hits for the Skeeters (30-42), who have lost five in a row. … Scottish champion Rangers endured one of the biggest humiliations in their history when it was knocked out of the Europa League competition by a Luxembourg team that never had won a match in a European competition. Progres Niederkorn upset Rangers 2-0 and advanced 2-1 on aggregate score in its 14th attempt to reach the second qualifying round. Rangers, 54-time champion of the Scottish Premiership, finished third last season.