Furyk’s Senior Open debut a winning one
Jim Furyk recovered from a rough start Sunday in the final round of the U.S. Senior Open to hold off Retief Goosen and Mike Weir by three strokes.
Making his debut in the event, Furyk closed with a 1-over 71 to become the eighth player to win both the U.S. Open and Senior Open, joining Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Billy Casper and Gary Player.
Furyk finished at 7-under 273 at Omaha Country Club.
He won the regular Open in 2003, is a 17-time winner on the PGA Tour and won his first two PGA Tour Champions events upon turning 50 last year. This was the third senior major he’s played. He tied for 16th in the Senior PGA and was sixth in the Senior Players Championship.
Furyk played the first three holes in 3 over, finding the unforgiving rough three times on the second hole and a tricky lie in the greenside bunker on the third. Suddenly, his fourshot lead was down to one.
Furyk righted himself with a birdie on the par-5 sixth and, after going out in 2 over 37, regained the four-shot lead by the time he made the turn.
It wasn’t until he stuck his 109-yard approach to 3 feet to birdie the par-5 16th that he put away his closest pursuers, major champions Goosen and Weir. That put him three up with two holes to play.
Furyk played his final 15 holes in 2 under and finished at 7-under 273 to win the Francis D. Ouimet Memorial Trophy and $720,000.
Weir tied for lowest round of the day with a 67, and Goosen shot 69.
• Lucas Glover ended 10 years without a victory when he birdied five of his last seven holes for a 7-under 64 to win the John Deere Classic in Silvis, Ill., by two shots.
Glover won for the fourth time in his career, the most recent in 2011 at Quail Hollow. He finished at 19-under 265.
Kevin Na tried to make a run with three birdies in four holes until he was slowed by a bogey on the 15th and couldn’t make up enough ground. He shot a 68. Ryan Moore also closed with a 68 for a runner-up finish.
• Australia’s Min Woo Lee won a three-way playoff against Matt Fitzpatrick and Thomas Detry at the Scottish Open to clinch his second European Tour title.
Lee birdied the first extra hole after the trio had finished tied on 18-under par at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick.
• Nasa Hataoka of Japan was declared the winner of the Marathon LPGA Classic when the final round was washed out by relentless, heavy rain in Sylvania, Ohio.
Hataoka had a six-shot lead over Elizabeth Szokol and Mina Harigae. She won for the fourth time on the LPGA Tour, and her first LPGA title in two years.
• Vinny Del Negro became the first basketball player to win the American Century Championship, birdieing the par-5 18th hole twice Sunday to beat John Smoltz.
Del Negro, the 54-yearold former NBA player and coach making his 20th appearance in the celebrity tournament in South Lake Tahoe, Nev., birdied the 18th in regulation to force a playoff and won with another birdie on the first extra hole.
Del Negro had a 20-point round at Edgewood Tahoe in the modified Stableford scoring event to match Smoltz (18) with a threeday total of 69.
Poirier defeats McGregor again
Conor McGregor sat and seethed with his back on the cage, a temporary cast around his left shin and foot. The biggest star in mixed martial arts was convinced he had just been robbed of revenge on Dustin Poirier by a broken leg.
“I was boxing the bleedin’ head off him, kicking the bleedin’ leg off him,” McGregor shouted. “This is not over! If we have to take this outside for him, we’ll take it outside.”
McGregor’s animosity toward Poirier hasn’t cooled, but this fight trilogy ended — for now, at least — with another victory for his more mildmannered enemy.
Poirier beat McGregor for the second time in six months when McGregor was unable to continue after the first round at UFC 264 late Saturday night.
McGregor (22-6) fell to the canvas and never got up after a punch by Poirier (28-6), who will get the UFC’s next lightweight title shot. McGregor’s leg and ankle buckled when he stepped back from the blow, and Poirier finished the round raining blows down on the former twodivision UFC champion.
“Just the thing had separated, and I bleedin’ landed on the wonky leg like Anderson Silva that one time, something similar to that,” McGregor said, referring to longtime middleweight champ Silva’s infamously gruesome broken leg against Chris Weidman. “It’s a mad business.”
UFC President Dana White said he was told McGregor broke his shin near the ankle. McGregor had surgery on Sunday morning, when it was revealed he had fractures of his tibia and fibula.
McGregor is 1-3 in MMA and 0-1 in boxing since late 2016. He turns 33 on Wednesday, and by the time his leg heals, it will be a half-decade since his last victory over a relevant opponent.
U.S. team captures Under-19 World Cup
The United States overcame a mammoth performance by 7-foot-2 Victor Wembanyama to beat France 83-81 and win the FIBA Under-19 World Cup in Riga, Latvia.
Wembanyama recorded 22 points, 8 rebounds and 8 blocks but fouled out with 2:42 to play and the Americans held on for the victory, led by 16 points apiece from Jaden Ivey of Purdue and Kenneth Lofton Jr. of Louisiana Tech.
Van der Breggen wins Giro d’Italia Donne
Olympic champion Anna van der Breggen solidified her favorite status ahead of the Tokyo Games by winning her fourth Giro d’Italia Donne, finishing safely in the breakaway on the final stage of the prestigious Italian stage race to Cormons.
Coryn Rivera of the U.S. beat British sprinter Lizzie Deignan to win the 10th stage.