Aug 20, 2023 4 min read

BMW Championship

One good break. One great shot. That’s what it took Sunday for Patrick Cantlay to win the BMW Championship for the second straight time with a finish that was nothing like last year except for his clutch moments.

One other difference: The victory didn’t give him the No. 1 seed going into the FedEx Cup finale next week at East Lake in Atlanta.

That was of little concern to Cantlay after his birdie-par finish for a 2-under 69, giving him a one-shot victory over Scott Stallings at Wilmington Country Club.

This looked to be headed that way when Cantlay and Stallings were tied down the stretch, with Masters champion Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele lurking.

Tied with two holes to play, Cantlay took an aggressive line to cut off the corner of a dogleg and figured he was headed for a cluster of bunkers. But the ball landed short of the last bunker, took a big hop over the sand, and tumbled into the first cut and rolled out to the fairway, just 64 yards from the hole.

In tennis

Venus Williams withdrew from Tennis in the Land on Sunday because of a knee injury, but the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion plans on playing in next week’s U.S. Open.

Williams released a video through the promoter of the WTA 250 event in downtown Cleveland, saying, “Unfortunately, my knee is just not acting right. It’s not supporting me being on the court.”

The 43-year-old Williams has received a wild card to compete at the U.S. Open, which begins on Aug. 28. She won back-to-back titles at Flushing Meadows in 2000-2001 after reaching the final in her debut in 1997.

Johnson-Thompson wins heptathlon

Never has finishing second felt so good to Katarina Johnson-Thompson. Or been so exhausting.

Starting the final event of the heptathlon, the 800 meters, with the slimmest of leads, and trying to hold off Anna Hall to complete a comeback from a ruptured Achilles three years ago, Johnson-Thompson never let the American get too far in front of her over the draining two-lap finale.

The British standout ran a personal-best time of 2 minutes, 5.63 seconds. She finished the race second, but because she kept the margin to only 1.54 seconds behind Hall, it was also good for a gold medal in the two-day endurance test.

She beat Hall by 20 points – 6,740-6,720 – the tightest margin in the event at world championships.

US tops Germany in World Cup tuneup

USA Basketball dug deep to head to the World Cup with an unbeaten exhibition record.

Anthony Edwards scored 34 points, Austin Reaves and Tyrese Haliburton each added 16 off the bench and the U.S. rallied from a 16-point second-half deficit to beat Germany 99-91 on Sunday night in its final tuneup game before heading to the Philippines for the World Cup.

An 18-0 run in the final minutes saved the Americans, who finished the exhibition season 5-0.

“What I like is that we know now they’ve got guts,” U.S. coach Steve Kerr said. “But we can get a lot better because we have a higher ceiling than a lot of teams – because most of these teams have been together. (Germany) has been together. They’re really good. We feel like we’ve got more room for growth. And we’ve got to keep working and getting better as we head to Manila.”

Edwards was brilliant, making 11 of 21 shots and going 8 of 8 from the line. The rest of the U.S. starters scored a combined 25 points; Edwards had nine more than that by himself.