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Today in Sports History

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1969 - U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew threw out the first ball at the major league All-Star Game.

1972 - Eddie Merckx of Belgium won his fourth consecutive Tour de France bicycling competition.

1985 - Oddibe McDowell became the first Texas Ranger player to hit for the cycle.

2000 - Lance Armstrong won his second Tour de France.

2000 - Tiger Woods became the youngest player to complete a career Grand Slam when he won the British Open. He was 24.

2009 - Mark Buehrle (Chicago White Sox) pitched the 18th perfect game in major league history. The Sox beat Tampa bay 5-0.

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British Open: Brian Harman cruises to his first career major victory

The knock on Brian Harman has been that he thinks to much. He's even admitted as much himself. It happened when he took a one-shot lead into the final round of the 2017 U.S. Open, when he was no match for Brooks Koepka that Sunday.

So when Harman, who hasn't won a tournament anywhere in six years, launched his drive on the par 5 fifth hole into a gorse bush, forcing him to take a penalty drop, suddenly his Sunday stroll to victory in the 151st British Open was in doubt. A bogey, his second on the day, meant the five-shot lead he'd taken into the round was down to three. With rain pouring down, Harman's mind presumably swirling and with the mighty Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm — the world's Nos. 2 and 3 ranked players — on the move, well, Harman looked in trouble.

Would he join the ranks of those who had major championships in their back pocket only to choke it away? Would he become another Jean van de Velde?

No, emphatically.

Harman answered the bogey at five with birdies at Nos. 6 and 7 and just like that, the Sunday stroll was back on.

A crowd of players behind him tried to step on the gas, but without Harman backing up, every charge proved futile. By the time Harman reach No. 13, the engraving of the Claret Jug had already begun.

Ninety minutes later, the 36-year-old native of Savannah, Georgia, was hoisting the jug as the Champion Golfer of the Year — a six-stroke winner over Rahm, Tom Kim, Sepp Straka and Jason Day.

"There were fleeting thoughts throughout the day, but I told myself I wasn't going to let any of that come into my brain," he said when asked when he started to think about winning. "So any time it came, I just thought of something else.

"I really honestly didn't think about winning until I had the ball on the green on 18."

British Open: Rory McIlroy’s major championship drought continues despite contending once again

Rory McIlroy, who finished T6 this week at Royal Liverpool, hasn’t won a major championship since 2014

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Carlos Alcaraz kicks off tennis’ post-Big Three era with career-defining Wimbledon win

Carlos Alcaraz defeated Novak Djokovic the way Djokovic has defeated so many others ... and the next few years of tennis now look very interesting indeed.

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Jay Busbee

Senior writer

Sun, Jul 16, 2023

This is what generational change looks like: The greatest player of his generation, face down on the green grass of Wimbledon as a player 16 years his junior dismantles him the way he’s dismantled so many others.
Novak Djokovic came into this weekend as close to a sure thing at Wimbledon as you’ll find in sports, a four-time defending champion and winner of 45 straight matches at Centre Court. But over the course of five sets lasting almost five hours, 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz stepped up and wrestled the title right out of Djokovic’s hands. The final totals: 1-6, 7-6 (8-6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4, numbers that only hint at the epic nature of this a back-and-forth, edge-of-despair to peak-of-glory instant classic.
Alcaraz’s win was statistically impressive enough: nine aces to Djokovic’s 2, 66 winners to Djokovic’s 32. But the feel of the match was so much more significant. Alcaraz beat Djokovic by showcasing the exact same attributes — resilience, patience, lighting-quick strikes — that Djokovic has used to win 23 grand slams and counting.
Djokovic captured Sunday’s first set with such speed and relentless precision that it seemed he’d have the trophy in hand before America’s West Coast even woke up. Alcaraz had never played on a stage quite like Wimbledon before, had never faced a final opponent of Djokovic’s caliber before. (Djokovic missed the 2022 US Open, which Alcaraz won, because of the United States’ COVID restrictions.)
But then something strange happened. Alcaraz steadied himself and started to deploy his entire arsenal. Alcaraz possesses a cannon forehand, a dart-precise drop shot and unparalleled speed, but if there’s a knock against him, it’s the fact that he overextends himself too quickly. He cramped up and lost his French Open semifinal match to Djokovic earlier this year, but he’s clearly already learned from that debacle.
In a five-set match, there are so many opportunities to lose focus, lose the thread, lose the match. Alcaraz ran through all of those — senseless double-faults, dumb unforced errors, frustration with the crowd and himself — and yet still managed to regroup and win the damn match. That isn’t a case of someone learning from past mistakes, that’s someone learning in real time and making adjustments on the fly.
Djokovic has mastered this kind of instant recalibration. So many times, he’s seemed to be on the ropes or even doomed, and then, in a heartbeat, the challenger finds that they’re the prey. For Djokovic, seeing the turnabout happen to him must be an unsettling feeling indeed.
It’s far too early to make any kind of sweeping pronouncements on Alcaraz’s career. He’ll need to stack majors from now until 2033 or so to even get in the conversation with Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. But he already displays some notable attributes: the style and fire of Nadal, the charisma and shot array of Federer … and a face-to-face victory over Djokovic.
"People have been talking about his game consisting of certain elements from Roger, Rafa and myself. I’d agree with that. He’s basically got the best of all three worlds," Djokovic himself said after the match. "I haven’t played a player like him ever."
To be clear, Djokovic isn’t going anywhere. He’ll have many more major opportunities ahead, and he still has several years remaining at the pinnacle of tennis. But for the first time, he appears to have a legitimate post-Nadal/Federer challenger, someone who not only can beat him in the biggest matches, but already has.
Djokovic came along too late to be a true head-to-head rival for Nadal and Federer, but a little too early to be anything but part of their era. He tends to suffer in comparison to them, regardless of numbers. He’s cranky where Federer is suave, mechanical where Nadal is free-flowing. Rooting for him has always felt like rooting for the house in Vegas.
But now, Djokovic’s career arc just got a whole lot more interesting. Now he hears footsteps. Suddenly his march to amass trophies is a race against time. Now, in every grand slam tournament going forward, he — or we — will check the seedings to find out how early he’ll have to face Alcaraz. Because someone who can beat you where you’re at your best can beat you anywhere.
TORONTO (AP) — Novak Djokovic withdrew Sunday from the National Bank Open, opting for additional rest after his loss to Carlos Alcaraz in the Wimbledon final.
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China's Zheng Qinwen wins maiden WTA title

China's Zheng Qinwen captured her first WTA title on Sunday with a three-sets victory over Jasmine Paolini of Italy in the Palermo clay-court final.

The 20-year-old Zheng, ranked at 26 in the world, came through 6-4, 1-6, 6-1 against her 52nd-ranked opponent, registering her 20th match win of the year.

It was Zheng's second career final after finishing runner-up in Tokyo last year.

She becomes the 11th Chinese woman to win a WTA singles title and second in 2023 after Zhu Lin triumphed at Hua Hin in Thailand in February.

"I won my first WTA match here and also my first WTA title, but you probably don't know that I won my first ITF championship in Italy," said Zheng, whose three-hour semi-final win over Mayar Sherif of Egypt only ended in the early hours of Sunday.

"This is really special for me. This is my first WTA 250 championship. I will remember that."

The 27-year-old Paolini was playing her fourth three-set match of the week, having already knocked out top seed Daria Kasatkina in the quarter-finals.

The effort took its toll as Zheng stretched to a 5-1 lead in the decider before claiming victory on a third match point.

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NASCAR results: Denny Hamlin wins for seventh time at Pocono to nab 50th career win, 600th for Toyota

Denny Hamlin got his second win of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season Sunday at Pocono.

Hamlin made the winning pass on a restart with less than 10 laps to go when he dove to the inside of leader Kyle Larson as the two barreled through Turn 1. Larson hit the wall on the exit of the corner as Hamlin completed the pass into Turn 2 before Justin Haley crashed to bring out another caution.

Shortly after the caution flag flew, Larson drove into Hamlin’s door on the frontstretch to show his displeasure with the way that Hamlin raced him.

Hamlin then easily held onto the lead with three laps to go on the final restart and was out in front of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. when the caution flag flew on the final lap for Ryan Preece’s stalled car. Preece spun on the penultimate lap, but NASCAR held the caution. He was unable to get going between Turns 2 and 3 before the leaders approached on the last lap.

Hamlin was loudly booed by many of the fans in attendance after he climbed from his car and he defended his pass of Larson amidst the noise.

"There was a lane," Hamlin said in his victory interview. "He missed the corner first and evidently he didn't have his right-side tires clean and when he gassed it up he kept going again. You have an option in those positions to either hold it wide open and hit the fence, or lift and race it out. But those are choices they made. I didn't hit either one of them."

Hamlin was using a plural noun because the caution that set up his winning restart pass came from Alex Bowman's crash. Bowman went spinning in Turn 3 from third place ahead of Hamlin, and while Hamlin was close to Bowman's bumper before the No. 48 car went around, it didn't appear via replay that Hamlin touched Bowman's car.

The win is the 50th of Hamlin's career and his seventh at Pocono. The 2.5-mile triangular track is his best track as he’s finished in the top 10 in 22 of his 34 starts there.

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Soccer Finished

ROYAL LIVERPOOL

HOYLAKE, WIRRA

NEW ZEALANDKey Words:

Brian Harman, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Jean van de Velde, Tom Kim, Sepp Straka, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic
Zheng Quinwen, Jasmine Paolini, Zhu Lin, Mayar Sherif, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, Martin Truex Jr, Alex Bowman..... New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Spain, USA, Japan, England, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Nigeria, Canada, France and Jamaica

Winners: New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Spain, USA, Japan, England, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands

Ties: Nigeria, Canada, France and Jamaica

inners:

Kenny Rogers Gambling

Sunday, July 23, 2023

7/23/2023 Today in Sports History. Brian Harman, Carlos Alcaraz, Zheng Quinwen. Denny Hamlin, World Cup Soccer Scores