Bettencourt 1 shot back at Pebble
Champions Tour players John Cook and Olin Browne meet Matt Bettencourt.
Cook and Browne shot 6-under 66s at Del Monte Golf Course on Thursday to share the first-round lead in the Callaway Golf Pebble Beach Invitational. Cook, coming off a win Nov. 1 in the Champions Tour’s season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship, had six birdies in his bogey-free round.
Browne, who won the Pebble Beach Invitational in 2001, opened with an eagle, shot 31 on the front nine and had four birdies while playing one group ahead of Cook.
Bettencourt, who was raised in Modesto but lives in South Carolina and was 10th in the U.S. Open, shot a 67 at Del Monte to trail by one.
• LPGA CHAMPIONSHIP, at Richmond, Texas — Michelle Wie is gone, putting all the attention on Lorena Ochoa’s player of the year fight with Jiyai Shin at the LPGA Tour Championship. Wie withdrew from the season-ending event Thursday because of a sprained ankle. Ochoa shot a 6-under 66 to take a 1-shot lead over Reilley Rankin.
Wie, 20, was fresh off her first LPGA Tour win last week at Ochoa’s tournament in Mexico. Drawing the largest galleries, she limped through her round of 72 on a gimpy ankle that she originally sprained at the Solheim Cup in August. She was treated but withdrew an hour later.
Ochoa teed off before the wind picked up at the Houstonian Golf and Country Club. She was four shots ahead of Shin (70), but the 21-year-old South Korean leads Ochoa by eight points (156-148) in the race to become the tour’s player of the year.
Shin and Ochoa started on the back nine and both were 2 under after three holes. Shin added birdies at Nos. 13 and 15 to move to 4 under. Both bogeyed the 17th, then picked up birdies early on their second nines. Ochoa added birdies on Nos. 6, 8 and 9, capping her round with a 15-foot putt and a fist pump.
• DUBAI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, at United Arab Emirates — Robert Allenby of Australia shot a 7-under 65 for a 1-shot lead after the first round while Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy vied for the European Tour money title. Allenby had eight birdies and only one bogey on the Earth Course, which is hosting the $7.5 million final event of the European Tour season. He was one shot ahead of Westwood, Chris Wood and Camilo Villegas, who all shot 66.
• TOUR SCHOOL, at Scottsdale, Ariz. — Steve Haskins shot his second straight 6-under 65 to take a 4-stroke lead over Ronnie Black after the third round of the Champions Tour National Qualifying Tournament. The 51-year-old son of late Hall of Fame basketball coach Don Haskins, he had a 17-under 199 total.
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