Lee Westwood shows there is still life in his golf game, is on the BMW PGA Championship leader board

VIRGINIA WATER, England (AP) Francesco Molinari mastered the toughest conditions of the week at Wentworth to shoot a 6-under 66 and share the lead with Rory McIlroy after three rounds of the BMW PGA Championship on Saturday.

Scoring was more difficult because of gusty winds and fast, firm greens at the West Course but Molinari managed a bogey-free round featuring six birdies starting from the eighth hole.

It was the lowest score of the day as the Italian took five shots off McIlroy, who started the round with a three-stroke lead and needed birdies at the par fives at Nos. 17 and 18 for a 1-under 71 to keep at least a share of first place on 13-under 203.

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It could be a two-way fight for the title at the European Tour’s flagship event, with their nearest challengers – defending champion Alex Noren (70), Sam Horsfield (72), Branden Grace (69) and Ross Fisher (68) – four shots back on 9 under.

Lee Westwood is in a four-man tie for seventh place, one stroke ..

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) Nasa Hataoka shot a 4-under 68 on Friday, and the Japanese teenager leads by one stroke over Minjee Lee after the second round of the LPGA Volvik Championship.

Hataoka, who lost in a playoff last week in the Kingsmill Championship in Virginia, made seven birdies Friday at Travis Pointe Country Club. She began her round on No. 10, and her best stretch came toward the end, when she birdied Nos. 4, 5 and 6.

The 19-year-old Japanese player was at 9 under for the tournament. Lee (69) also was solid for a second straight day. Gaby Lopez (68), Jodi Ewart Shadoff (70) and Lindy Duncan (70) were another stroke back.

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BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (AP) Kevin Sutherland and Scott McCarron have been rivals since their junior golf days around Sacramento, California. The two old friends were back at it Friday at the top of the Senior PGA Championship leaderboard.

”It’s honestly, nothing new for us,” said Sutherland who played in the third-to-last group and birdied his last two holes for a 5-under 66 to match McCarron at 8 under.

McCarron had a 68 in the morning wave to emerge from a championship record group of six tied for the first-round lead.

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Sutherland was last year’s Charles Schwab Cup winner with his only senior win coming in the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship, while McCarron has six PGA Tour Champions wins, including a major at the 2017 Senior Players Championship.

”We are both (Northern California) guys, played in high school, junior golf, on tour and it seems like a lot on the Champions Tour,” Sutherland said. ”We were in the last group on Sundays a lot la..

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) Justin Rose considered his first 15 holes in the second round at Colonial pretty flawless. The last three worked out OK, too, even with the only bogey for the leader of the Fort Worth Invitational.

”Last three holes got a bit scrappy,” Rose said after a 6-under 64 that got him to 10 under Friday at Hogan’s Alley.

After missing the green at the 422-yard seventh hole, the Englishman chipped in from 16 feet for a birdie. He missed the green again at the par-3 eighth for a bogey. Then after his tee shot into the rough and an approach that just cleared the water fronting his final hole, the world’s fifth-ranked player two-putted for a closing par.

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That was good enough for one-stroke lead over Argentina’s Emiliano Grillo , whose 67 included six consecutive holes without a par. Defending U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka (63) and Satoshi Kodaira (67) were 7 under.

Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open champ who won the HSBC Champions in Shanghai in hi..

VIRGINIA WATER, England (AP) Rory McIlroy shot a 7-under 65 to move into the second-round lead at the BMW PGA Championship on Friday.

So good was McIlroy’s bogey-free round at Wentworth that playing partner Alex Noren, the defending champion, called it ”the best round I’ve ever seen.”

”I’m about to quit golf, I think,” joked Noren, whose own round of 68 left him five shots off the pace on 7 under par alongside Robert Rock and Kiradech Aphibarnrat.

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McIlroy made seven birdies, including four straight from No. 12. Like in the first round, he failed to pick up any shots on the final two holes – both par fives – but the four-time major winner still described his play as up there with his best in 2018 ”ball-striking-wise.”

”I had everything sort of firing today,” said the former top-ranked player, who matched his career-low score at Wentworth although the previous 65 was in 2009 before the course changes the following year.

”Every tournament is a big tournam..

FacebookPinterestHarry HowJerry West, shown here in his past role as executive director of the Northern Trust Open at Riviera Country Club. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

When the object of the game is to put the ball in the hole, well, Jerry West is likely to excel at it. A Hall of Fame basketball player, West also was an exceptional golfer.
Time has eroded his golf skills, but he’s still exceptional for his age. He’ll turn 80 on Monday and it won’t be long until he shoots his age or better.
West has been doing so as recently as April, according to this note from Marc Stein, the estimable basketball writer for the New York Times and a former NBA reporter for ESPN. Stein wrote that West had rounds of 78 and 75 in April at Virginia Country Club in Long Beach, Calif.
A member at Bel-Air CC in Los Angeles, West was playing Virginia CC because his home course is undergoing renovation. Following a hiatus from golf — he did not post a score at GHIN.com (Golf Handicap and Information Netw..

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He stands 6-foot-3 and is fairly soft-spoken, so it’s easy to see where Thomas Pieters might have a gentle giant persona. But the 26-year-old native of Belgium gets upset like the rest of us. And when it happens, well let’s just say you don’t want to be a golf club when Pieters starts running hot.
Case in point: Friday at the BMW PGA Championship, when a bad swing with his second shot on the par-5 fourth hole led to this golfer-on-equipment violence.
https://twitter.com/GWcampusinsider/status/1000017149035937792
We’ll forgive Rich Lerner the “snap” pun. We, too, were a little flabbergasted by what we saw and didn’t exactly know what to say.
It probably doesn’t help that Pieters shot an opening-round 75 and is in need of some birdies at Wentworth in order to make the cut in the European Tour’s flagship event. And with plenty of Ryder Cup points on the line this week, Pieters knows it’s a big one for any number of reasons.
The crazy thing? He went on to make a par on that hole. That said..

Mark ThompsonWhile we Americans are understandably focused on the Indy 500, it's not the only iconic, open-wheel insanity going down Memorial Day Weekend. A little over three hours before the 500 goes green, Europe's best and bougiest will gather in the yacht-and-casino capital of planet, Monaco, for the most revered stop on Formula 1 calendar, the Monaco Grand Prix.
A tight, twisting 2-mile circuit weaving through the glitzy streets of the European principality, the Monaco Grand Prix is as daunting (and unmistakeable) as the Brickyard or Talladega, which makes what you're about to see all the more impressive. This is cockpit cam footage from the all-time, flat-out Monaco Grand Prix lap record, courtesy of Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo. Needless to say, it is TENSE.
https://twitter.com/F1/status/999913565006970880
What you see there is 2 miles and 19 corners—including that classic, sweeping downhill hairpin, Mirabeau—in 1 minute and 11 seconds, set during the s..