Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez will play left field and bat fourth in Game 3 of the World Series against the Dodgers on Friday night. That means Andrew Benintendi is the odd man out as the series shifts to Los Angeles.
Tony Ressler said he “didn’t know what I was doing” when he purchased the Hawks in 2015. In the time since, as “a deer in the headlights,” he’s starting to turn things around.
Boston is looking to move within one win of another World Series title, while L.A. hopes homefield advantage will pay dividends.
JACKSON, Miss. – The transition to pro golf can be a tough one, even for a player whose physical talents drew comparisons to Tiger Woods. Sub-par scores almost always spell success in college golf. They can lead to missed cuts at the highest level. Players who felt unbeatable competing against their peers can lose confidence when they start losing to men who are old enough to be their father. Norman Xiong learned that after turning pro this summer. When he arrived at this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship, where he’s playing on a sponsor exemption, he’d missed all six of his cuts as a pro. “When I turned pro, it was a little bit overwhelming, I guess,� Xiong said. “I think I’ve done a really good job of learning and getting used to it.� He didn’t just make his first cut this week. He was atop the leaderboard after shooting 67 on Friday. He sits at 9-under 135 after two rounds at the Country Club of Jackson. Xiong, 19, is leading a PGA TOUR event while his high-school classmates are early in their sophomore years of college. If he can win, he’d be a day older than Jordan Spieth was when he claimed the 2013 John Deere Classic. Spieth was the youngest PGA TOUR winner since Ralph Guldahl in 1931. A newfound strength – his short game – has carried Xiong over two rounds played in cold, windy conditions at this century-old layout. Like many of his peers, Xiong plays aggressively off the tee, opting for driver despite the Country Club of Jackson’s penal Bermuda rough. It’s paid off on the par-5s, which he has played in 6 under par, including an eagle on Friday’s second hole. The 55-footer he holed from the fringe on that hole was one of three hole-outs for Xiong on Friday. He also saved par all seven times he missed a green in the second round. Xiong has hit 11 greens in each of the first two rounds but has saved par on all but one occasion. He leads the field in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green. He chipped in on No. 16 and holed another putt from the fringe on the sixth hole. Xiong also holed a 56-foot birdie putt Thursday. Xiong said his short game used to be a weakness, but it has improved since employing coach Josh Gregory after turning pro. Bermudagrass poses unique challenges, especially to those who grew up outside the Southeast. Gregory has helped Xiong, who grew up in Southern California before attending the University of Oregon, change his clubhead path on chip shots. Xiong’s club was closed and traveling to the left through impact. Now he feels like he’s drawing his chip shots. A strong short game is a helpful addition to an impressive repertoire of physical skills. “At 19 years old, I think Tiger is the only guy I would defer to as being better than Norman. I haven’t seen much better than him at that age. He’s really that good,� Oregon head coach Casey Martin said in a GolfChannel.com profile earlier this year. Martin was teammates with Woods at Stanford. Xiong turned pro this year as college golf’s consensus player of the year. He won both the Jack Nicklaus and Fred Haskins awards, which are given to the top player in college golf. He won six times in his sophomore season, including four of his final six starts. Xiong already is ahead of the curve. He came to Oregon a semester early, halfway through his senior year of high school, and immediately entered the Ducks’ lineup. He was the national freshman of the year in just half a season. He entered the lineup immediately and won in his third start. Amateur accomplishments can help secure big endorsement deals and sponsor exemptions, but they are meaningless once the tee is in the ground. The score is all that matters. Xiong saw that this summer. He shot under par in his first four stroke-play starts on the PGA TOUR. He received nothing for his efforts, missing the cut all four times. He also missed the cut in the Barracuda Championship, which uses a Stableford format, and the European Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links. “It was very frustrating,� he said. “I felt as though my whole game was really solid.� Xiong recently saw success a month ago at the first stage of Web.com Tour Q-School, shooting 16 under par to share medalist honors. He is scheduled to play the second stage next week in California but can change his site if he qualifies for next week’s Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Of course, a win means he can scrap the whole Q-School quest. He’s halfway there.
The contenders for Week 8’s game you can’t miss include a rematch of one of the most thrilling ends in postseason history and a chance to see if the No. 1 draft pick responds.
Which players is Houston sending out to match salary? Apparently the answer to the first question is Brandon Knight and Marquese Chriss, who salaries can be aggregated Wednesday (two months after being acquired from the Suns). Minnesota is showing no inclination to move on Houston offer of two injured players and four first-rounders for Jimmy Butler, per sources.
Toro Rosso will not make a decision on the future of Brendon Hartley until after the conclusion of the current Formula One season.
Former NHL president John Ziegler Jr., a Hall of Famer who helped bring European players into the NHL and oversaw a merger with the upstart WHA in 1979, has died at 84.
In his first year as manager of the Boston Red Sox, Alex Cora is already making history: His team set a franchise record for the most wins in one season and, after clinching the American League Championship Series, Cora is the first Puerto Rican to lead a team to the World Series. Cora, who played for the Red Sox from 2005 to 2008, signed a three-year contract with the team last October. The 43-year-old signed with the Red Sox shortly after Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, including his hometown, Caguas.
Through two rounds at the World Golf Championships – HSBC Champions, Tony Finau sits at 11 under par and has opened up a three-stroke advantage over a trio of players. Here are the top 10 win probabilities heading into the weekend: The top 3 in terms of their share of win probability, Tony Finau, Justin Rose, and Tommy Fleetwood, are all among the top 6 players in this field according to our model (Rose at #2, Finau at #5, and Fleetwood at #6). There is a 72 percent chance that the winner will emerge from that trio of golfers. While Rose has been a top-10 player in the world for several years now, both Fleetwood and Finau have only recently risen to that level. In fact, they have followed similar trajectories: here are plots of their respective performances over the last few years (Fleetwood above, Finau below): Each bar in these graphs indicates the golfer’s average Strokes Gained at an event, and the black line is a 10-event moving average. Both Fleetwood and Finau were performing at a level similar to an average PGA TOUR professional (i.e. Strokes Gained of 0) near the end of the 2016 season. Recently they have both elevated their games to near the level of a top 5 player in the world (which can be thought of as a golfer who averages +2 Strokes Gained per round). Finau and Fleetwood have done everything but win over the past year on the PGA TOUR; a win at a World Golf Championships event this week would solidify their position among golf’s current elite. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cutâ€�, “Top 20â€�, “Top 5â€�, and “Winâ€� probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the World Golf Championships – HSBC Champions, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.
