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Published: July 3, 2008
Love, others add names to Wyndham list
Davis Love III, Tim Clark, David Toms, Carl Pettersson, Jerry Kelly and Lucas Glover are in the latest group of golfers to commit to play in next month's Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club.
Love, a two-time winner in Greensboro, will join defending champion Brandt Snedeker and Rocco Mediate, the U.S. Open runner-up and also a two-time winner in Greensboro. The tournament is scheduled Aug. 14-17.
Mark Brazil, the Wyndham's tournament director, said: "During my trip to the AT&T National at Congressional Country Club this week, there was a lot of excitement among the players about our move to Sedgefield and the opportunity to play a Donald Ross-designed golf course."
During the tournament's 31 years at Forest Oaks, its former home, higher-ranked players often stayed away. But the Wyndham is now the final regular-season tournament in the year-long FedEx Cup, and the change in course is improving the quality of the field.
Love, a native of Charlotte and a former golfer at North Carolina, won in Greensboro in 1992 and 2006. Clark and Pettersson (N.C. State) and Glover (Clemson) also are former ACC golfers.
-- John Dell
Hockey
■ The Carolina Hurricanes found the physical defenseman they have been looking for yesterday, signing Josef Melichar, formerly of the Pittsburgh Penguins, to a one-year contract worth $1 million.
Melichar, 29, spent last season with Linkoping of the Swedish Elite League, finishing with 74 penalty minutes in 50 regular-season games and a team-leading 39 penalty minutes in 16 playoff games. He played in 310 games with Pittsburgh between 2000 and 2007 and had his best season on offense in 2005-06 (3 goals, 12 assists).
■ Marian Hossa played on the losing side in last season's Stanley Cup finals but signed a one-year contract yesterday with the champion Detroit Red Wings and next season will help them try to repeat. An NHL source told The Associated Press that the deal is worth $7.45 million.
Hossa, a high-scoring winger, was one of the key players in the Pittsburgh Penguins' run to the finals, which Detroit won in six games. Hossa has scored at least 29 goals each of the past eight seasons and has 299 in his career, dating to 1998-99 -- his first full season in the NHL.
■ Evgeni Malkin, a finalist for the Hart Trophy as the NHL MVP, yesterday signed a five-year extension with the Pittsburgh Penguins, a deal that will keep him under contract until the 2013-14 season.
Malkin, a 21-year-old forward, is arguably the team's best player besides Sidney Crosby. He had 106 points, including 47 goals, last season and was an All-Star. He was the No. 2 pick in the 2004 draft, and he scored 33 goals in 2006-07 on his way to winning the NHL's rookie-of-the-year award.
■ The Dallas Stars signed forward Sean Avery to a four-year, $15.5 million deal yesterday. Avery is a former NHL-leader in penalty minutes, but his style is effective. In 86 games with the New York Rangers over the last two seasons, the club was 50-20-16 with him in the lineup and 9-13-3 without him.
In the recent playoffs, the NHL put in a so-called "Avery Rule" after Avery set up in front of goalie Martin Brodeur of New Jersey and blocked his view by waving his hand and stick. Avery wound up scoring three goals in the series victory but lacerated his spleen in the next round against Pittsburgh and was finished.
■ The Vancouver Canucks signed center Ryan Johnson to a two-year, $2.2-million contract yesterday and re-signed backup goalie Curtis Sanford. Johnson, who spent the past five seasons with the St. Louis Blues, had five goals and 18 points in 79 games last season and led NHL forwards with 105 blocked shots.
■ The Tampa Bay Lightning re-signed Ryan Craig to a two-year, $1.575 million contract yesterday. Craig, a restricted free agent, missed 72 games last season with back and knee injuries. The forward has played in 127 NHL games, netting 30 goals and 57 points.
Basketball
■ Davidson's Stephen Curry is a one of four finalists for an ESPY award in the category of Best Breakthrough Athlete. He became the fourth player in NCAA history to score 30 or more points in his first four NCAA Tournament games, led Davidson to a regional final and finished fourth in the nation in scoring with an average of 25.9 points.
ESPY winners will be determined by fan voting, and the ESPYS will air July 20 on ESPN. The other finalists for the Best Breakthrough ESPY are Adrian Peterson (Minnesota Vikings), Kyle Busch (NASCAR) and Ana Ivanovic (women's tennis).
■
The SuperSonics will move to Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season as part of a settlement announced yesterday with the city of Seattle.
The agreement ends a contentious relationship that culminated in a recent six-day federal trial over terms of the team's KeyArena lease. The judge was scheduled to rule yesterday afternoon.
The settlement calls for Sonics owner Clay Bennett and his Professional Basketball Club LLC to pay as much as $75 million to the city in exchange for the immediate termination of the lease. The team's name and colors will be staying in Seattle.
Bennett said the move would start today.
■ Bruce Pearl, the men's basketball coach at Tennessee, has a new contract that will keep him at the university through the 2013-14 season and increase his salary to an average of $2.3 million a year. Pearl, previously signed through 2012-13, made $1.3 million last season.
His new contarct includes a $250,000 bonus and an upfront retention bonus of $1.5 million.
■ The University of Kentucky Basketball Museum, which has struggled to find an audience since it opened in 1999, has shut its doors because of falling attendance and financial problems.
Rob Mullens, Kentucky's deputy athletics director, said yesterday that the museum, which was not affiliated with the university, was averaging less than 25,000 visitors a year. Consultants told museum officials before it opened that 110,000 fans a year could push through the turnstiles.
■ John Harrell, a point guard who helped Duke to the NCAA Tournament championship game in 1978, died Monday in Durham at the age of 50. Harrell played in 63 career games for the Blue Devils and averaged 5.1 points in 1977-78, when Duke won the ACC Tournament and lost to Kentucky in the NCAA final. He played high-school basketball at Durham Hillside and started his college career at N.C. Central.
■ Michael Beasley's first official practice with the Miami Heat ended quickly yesterday. Beasley, the No. 2 pick in last week's NBA Draft, was hit in the chest by an inadvertent elbow during a defensive drill about 45 minutes into a summer-league workout session and was taken to a doctor for observation.
Coach Erik Spoelstra said that the move was strictly precautionary and should not affect Beasley's availability for Miami's five-games-in-five-days run through the Orlando summer league, which will start Monday.
■ The University of Alaska Fairbanks has canceled its BP Top of the World college-basketball tournament.
University officials said yesterday they weren't able to attract teams in the competitive landscape that followed an NCAA rule change.
Before 2006, there were 10 certified preseason basketball tournaments in the country, including the Top of the World Classic and the University of Alaska Anchorage's Great Alaska Shootout.
Rule changes in 2006 allowed any institution to host a multiple-team tournament; there were 45 held last year.
Athletics Director Forrest Karr of Alaska Fairbanks said the increase in tournaments greatly changed how much schools were being paid to participate in tournaments.
Three teams had signed up for the Nov. 20-23 tournament last year: Stanford, Morehead State and Tennessee-Chattanooga. The latter two dropped out, paying a $30,000 buyout fee, to play at tournaments closer to their campuses, UAF officials said.
Football
■ Brandon Dillard, a redshirt junior wide receiver who was expected to contend for significant playing time at Virginia Tech, will miss the season after rupturing his right Achilles' tendon Tuesday night in player-organized offseason workouts. Trainer Mike Goforth said that Dillard, one of the fastest players in school history, will have surgery next week and then will face four to six months of rehabilitation.
■ Coach Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee has a new contract worth an average of nearly $3 million over the next seven seasons. He will receive a raise of nearly $1 million, his first raise since February 2005, and will become the fourth-highest paid coach in the Southeastern Conference.
Fulmer's new contract is worth $2.4 million for the coming season and $3.3 million for 2014, with automatic raises of $150,000 a year. He can also receive bonuses for reaching certain goals, such as an SEC championship or national championship.
■ Steve Foley, a former linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, has agreed to settle his lawsuit against Aaron Mansker, an off-duty police officer who shot him and ended his pro football career. The settlement, also with Mansker's employee, the city of Coronado, was reached before testimony resumed in the week-old civil trial, but the terms are confidential said Foley's attorney, Harvey Levine.
Foley, who sought millions of dollars in damages as compensation for lost past and future earnings, was shot in a leg, hip and hand in September 2006 after Mansker followed his car home on the suspicion that the driver was drunk. Foley pleaded guilty in 2007 to misdemeanor drunken driving.
Miscellaneous
■ A Dutch judge yesterday ordered Rabobank, the former team of cyclist Michael Rasmussen, to pay him the equivalent of $1 million for wrongful dismissal after it fired him amid doping suspicions just four days before the end of the Tour de France. The damages include a $630,000 team bonus Rasmussen would have received for winning the Tour, which he was leading at the time.
Rasmussen was fired for lying about his whereabouts before the Tour in what the team said was an attempt to avoid pre-Tour doping tests. Rasmussen told cycling's governing body (UCI) that he was in Mexico when he was actually in Italy and France. He has acknowledged lying to the UCI but insists that his team knew where he was.
■ FIFA is searching for a neutral venue for two World Cup qualifiers between warring neighbors Sudan and Chad and wants the teams to play their African Group 10 games in the same city on Sept. 6 and Sept. 10. FIFA said in a statement yesterday that "the city where the matches will be held will be communicated at a later date."
■ Big Brown returned to work yesterday, going five-eighths of a mile in a slow 1:06.71 at Aqueduct in New York in his first workout since running last in last month's Belmont Stakes. Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. said that Big Brown's feet, including the cracked hoof patched the day before the Belmont, are in fine shape. The horse's next race will most likely be the $1 million Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park on Aug. 3.
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