GOLF
Phil Mickelson closed with a 5-under 66 on Wednesday to win his PGA Tour Champions debut at Ozarks National in Ridgedale, Missouri.
Mickelson finished the three-day event at 22 under, three shots ahead of Tim Petrovic. The wire-to-wire victory made Mickelson the 20th player to win on the 50-and-over-tour in his debut, not to mention gave him some much-needed confidence after a missed cut at The Northern Trust knocked him from the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
TENNIS
WESTERN & SOUTHERN OPEN: Fourth-seeded Naomi Osaka reached the semifinals of the Western & Southern Open on Wednesday and withdrew a few hours later in a call for racial justice.
The last Top 10 seed in the women’s bracket joined professional athletes in basketball, baseball and soccer in demanding change after Jacob Blake was shot by police.
Osaka tweeted that as a Black woman, she feels compelled to pull out of the tournament to put a focus on police shooting Black people.
“I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction,” she tweeted. “Watching the continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police is honestly making me sick to my stomach.
“I’m exhausted of having a new hashtag pop up every few days and I’m extremely tired of having this same conversation over and over again. When will it ever be enough?”
Osaka beat No. 12 Anett Kontaveit 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 to reach the semifinals. She was scheduled to play No. 14 Elise Mertens.
Victoria Azarenka will play eighth-seeded Johanna Konta in the other women’s semifinal. Konta beat Maria Sakkari 6-4, 6-3, and Azarenka advanced in straight sets against Ons Jabeur.
In the men’s bracket, top-ranked Novak Djokovic had no problems with his creaky neck or the swirling winds during a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Jan-Lennard Struff that was by far his best showing of the week.
In the semifinals, he’ll face Roberto Bautista Agut, who knocked out defending champion Daniil Medvedev earlier in the day.
Medvedev failed to close it out in the second set, and Bautista Agut rallied for a 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory that eliminated yet another top player out of the tune-up tournament for the U.S. Open. Djokovic is the only player left in the tournament with an ATP Masters 1000 title to his credit.
Fourth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas also advanced to the semifinals when Reilly Opelka withdrew during the first set of their match after getting treatment for an injured right knee.
U.S. OPEN: Kei Nishikori, the 2014 U.S. Open runner-up, said he tested negative for COVID-19 after having two positive tests but still decided to withdraw from the Grand Slam tournament that begins next week.
Nishikori wrote on his mobile app that he is ready to “slowly” return to practice – but not prepared to compete in best-of-five-set matches.
INJURY: Juan Martin del Potro had surgery on his right knee, the third operation for the 2009 U.S. Open champion since getting injured two years ago.
He originally fractured his right kneecap at the Shanghai Masters in October 2018. After he returned from surgery, he slipped during a match at the Queen’s Club grass-court tournament in June 2019 and needed another procedure.
SOCCER
SPAIN: Barcelona hasn’t given up on Lionel Messi just yet.
A day after the Argentine great told the club he wants to leave, Barcelona said its restructuring project still revolves around the player.
“We want to rebuild for the future together with the best player in history,” Ramon Planes, the club’s technical director, said. “We are not contemplating any departure on a contractual level because we want him to stay. We have to show a huge respect for Messi because he is the best player in the world.”
ENGLAND: Manchester United captain Harry Maguire has filed an appeal against his conviction for assault and attempted bribery of a police officer and will get a retrial, the Premier League club said.
Maguire was handed a 21-month suspended sentence on Tuesday following his arrest after a brawl last week on the Greek island of Mykonos.
WOMEN’S CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Lyon reached the final for the fifth straight time after Wendie Renard scored with a 67th-minute header to secure a 1-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain at San Sebastion, Spain.
Lyon will seek its fifth consecutive title in Sunday’s final against Wolfsburg, which defeated Barcelona in the other semifinal on Tuesday.
COLLEGES
FOOTBALL: North Carolina State’s season opener at Virginia Tech was postponed for two weeks until Sept. 26 because of a cluster of COVID-19 cases among Wolfpack athletes.
The delay comes two days after N.C. State paused all athletic activities. The school didn’t specify which programs were impacted when it announced a cluster of 27 positive cases tied to athletics.
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