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Sports Briefs: Safina withdraws; Serena Williams is No. 1 in rankings
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Published: October 29, 2009
DOHA, Qatar Dinara Safina pulled out of the Sony Ericsson Championships after just two games with a serious back injury yesterday, handing the year-end No. 1 ranking to Serena Williams.
Safina said a disk in her lower back was "starting to fracture" and the injury has been bothering her for three months. She said doctors told her she will be sidelined for at least six weeks, and that she may not be fit in time for next year's Australian Open.
Safina said she took anti-inflammatory injections to try to defend her No. 1 ranking in Doha.
Safina, the main No. 1 since April, regained the top ranking this week, but her margin over Williams was so slim that the player who performed best in Doha was guaranteed to end the year as No. 1.
Williams won her first match on Tuesday and beat sister, Venus, 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (4) yesterday.
Williams, the Australian Open and Wimbledon champ, will end a year as No. 1 for the first time since 2002.
Safina was serving at 1-1 against Jelena Jankovic when she stopped play, walked over to her chair and covered her face with a towel. She then told the chair umpire she could not continue.
Basketball
■ Point guard Devan Downey of South Carolina has missed practice time dealing with flu-like symptons.
Downey, an all-Southeastern Conference player who averaged nearly 20 points a game last season, was out of practice Tuesday and yesterday. The school said Downey wouldn't take part in any team activities through the weekend.
Along with Downey's illness, reserve guard Robert Wilder is listed as day-to-day with a right-foot sprain, freshman Stephen Spinella is recovering from a concussion suffered in Tuesday's practice, and forward Johndre Jefferson is out from 10 to 14 days with a right Achilles strain.
■ The Catawba men and Lenoir-Rhyne women finished atop the South Atlantic Conference's preseason basketball polls yesterday, with Catawba topping Tusculum by 11 points, and L-R finishing 10 points ahead of Carson-Newman.
Filling out the men's poll were Lincoln Memorial, Lenoir-Rhyne, Wingate, Mars Hill, Carson-Newman, Brevard and Newberry. After L-R and Carson-Newman in the women's poll were Newberry, Tusculum, Wingate, Catawba, Lincoln Memorial, Mars Hill and Brevard.
■ The Winston-Salem Crones women's basketball team won the bronze medal last weekend in N.C. Senior Games competition in Greenville.
Golf
■ Tom Lehman has withdrawn from the Charles Schwab Cup Championship because of a family emergency, leaving 29 players in this weekend's season finale on the Champions Tour. The nature of the emergency was not disclosed yesterday.
Lehman was 22nd on the money list to qualify for the tournament. Because he withdrew, the winner of this year's tournament will receive 884 points and $442,000, meaning that four players will have a chance to claim the $1 million annuity for winning the Schwab Cup competition.
■ Paul Casey is trying to shrug off a rib injury that could trouble his chances at this weekend's Word Match Play Championship in Spain. Casey, who won the competition in 2006, said yesterday that his rib area was tender and tight as he prepared to play a full tournament for the first time since July.
"Trouble is, there's no way really of testing it until I'm out here in the mix playing golf," said Casey, who is scheduled to open play today against Scott Strange. Others in the field of 16 include Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Masters champion Angel Cabrera, Retief Goosen and Anthony Kim.
■ Seve Ballesteros said yesterday on his Web page that his latest medical checks show that his recovery from brain cancer is going well, with the tests confirming that an aggressive radiotherapy treatment the past six weeks had provided "very positive" results. He said he's resting after fatigue from the treatment.
■ The LPGA Tour picked Michael Whan as its new commissioner yesterday, turning to a former marketing executive in golf and hockey equipment to rebuild the tour's relationships with sponsors. Whan, 44, previously worked for TaylorMade Golf and Wilson Sporting Goods and most recently was the president of Mission-Itech Hockey.
"I was that crazy high-school kid cutting greens at 5:30 in the morning so he could play free golf in the afternoon and caddying on Sundays," Whan said during an introductory news conference yesterday. He replaces Carolyn Bivens, who was forced out by players in July as the tour kept losing sponsors.
Miscellaneous
■ W. Clay Campbell, Martinsville Speedway's president, said that Dick Thompson, the track's longtime public-relations director, has died.
Campbell said Thompson died yesterday at age 74.
Campbell said his grandfather, track founder H. Clay Earles, hired Thompson in 1966 to help publicize events at the track. Hired away from The Roanoke Times, where he wrote about racing, Thompson was innovative and helped usher the track and NASCAR into an era of track sponsors.
Thompson retired after nearly 40 years in January 2005.
The press box at Martinsville Speedway is named for him.
■ Two-time champion Martin Lel of Kenya has withdrawn from the New York City Marathon with a leg injury. He won the Great North Half Marathon in England last month, but manager Federico Rosa says that a nagging leg injury surfaced during training. Lel won the NYC Marathon in 2003 and 2007 and was considered a favorite in Sunday's race.
■ About 1,000 people are expected to attend Tuesday night's special tribute for Myles Brand, the late NCAA president who died of pancreatic cancer last month.
The NCAA and Indiana University, where Brand served as president for eight years before taking over the governing body, invited most of the guests. They range from politicians to university administrators and coaches.
Among those scheduled to speak are Brand's son, Josh, Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt and Georgia president Michael Adams, who chairs the NCAA's executive committee.
The tribute is expected to begin at 6 p.m. and last about 90 minutes at Conseco Fieldhouse, the home of the NBA's Indiana Pacers.
■ A man with slicked-back hair who stole $26,000 in cash and jewelry from an Israeli basketball team at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, also scammed his way into two downtown hotels to steal thousands of dollars from Chivas USA soccer players and a salsa music troupe, police said yesterday.
Detectives linked the man to the three thefts after comparing surveillance footage from the Staples Center on Oct. 20 to video and descriptions from two hotels that had reported similar thefts in August and September, said Lt. Paul Vernon, head of detectives for downtown Los Angeles.
■ The Council of State, France's highest administrative body, yesterday rejected German cyclist Stefan Schumacher's appeal of his two-year doping ban.
Schumacher tested positive for CERA, an advanced form of the blood-booster EPO, after the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) retested samples from the 2008 Tour de France.
Schumacher, who won two time trials and wore the leader's yellow jersey at the 2008 Tour, said that the retroactive procedure wasn't approved at the time of retesting.
In February, the AFLD banned Schumacher from racing in France for two years, with the International Cycling Union following with a worldwide ban until Jan. 21, 2011.
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