AP Sportlight
Aug. 18
1923 — Helen Mills, 17, ends Molla Bjurstedt Mallory’s domination of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships and starts her own with a 6-2, 6-1 victory.
1958 — Floyd Patterson knocks out Roy Harris in the 13th round at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to retain his world heavyweight title.
1964 — The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from competing in the Summer Olympics because of its apartheid policies.
1994 — South Africa is introduced for the first time in 36 years during the opening ceremonies of the 15th Commonwealth Games held in Victoria, British Columbia. South Africa had been banned from the Games since 1958 because of its apartheid policies.
1995 — Thirteen-year-old Dominique Moceanu becomes the youngest to win the National Gymnastics Championships senior women’s all-around title in New Orleans.
2004 — Paul Hamm wins the men’s gymnastics all-around Olympic gold medal by the closest margin ever in the event. Controversy follows after it was discovered a scoring error that may have cost Yang Tae-young of South Korea the men’s all-around title. Yang, who finished with a bronze, is wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his second-to-last routine, the parallel bars. He finishes third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who becomes the first American man to win gymnastics’ biggest prize.
2008 — A day after winning an Olympic gold medal in Beijing, Rafael Nadal officially unseats Roger Federer to become the world’s No. 1 tennis player when the ATP rankings are released. Federer had been atop the rankings for 235 weeks.
2013 — For the first time in Solheim Cup history, the Europeans leaves America with the trophy. Caroline Hedwall becomes the first player in the 23-year history of the event to win all five matches. She finishes with a 1-up victory over Michelle Wie and gives Europe the 14 points it needed to retain the cup.
2013 — Usain Bolt is perfect again with three gold medals. The Jamaican great becomes the most successful athlete in the 30-year history of the world championships. The 4x100-meter relay gold erases the memories of the 100 title he missed out on in South Korea two years ago because of a false start. Bolt, who already won the 100 and 200 meters, gets his second such sprint triple at the world championships, matching the two he achieved at the Olympics.
2016 — Jamaica’s Usain Bolt completes an unprecedented third consecutive sweep of the 100- and 200-meter sprints, elevating his status as the most decorated male sprinter in Olympic history. He wins the 200-meter race with a time of 19.78 seconds to defeat Andre de Grasse of Canada. American Ashton Eaton defends his Olympic decathlon title, equaling the games record with a surge on the last lap of the 1,500 meters — the last event in the two-day competition. Helen Maroulis defeats Japan’s Saori Yoshida 4-1 in the 53-kilogram freestyle final to win the first-ever gold medal for a United States women’s wrestler.
2018 — Accelerate cruises to a record 12 1/2-length victory in the $1 million Pacific Classic at Del Mar, becoming just the third horse to sweep all three of Southern California’s major races for older horses in the same year.
Aug. 19
1909 — The first race is held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Twelve-thousand spectators watch Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer win a five-mile race with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour. The track’s surface of crushed rock and tar breaks up in a number of places and causes the deaths of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators.
1921 — Detroit’s Ty Cobb gets his 3,000th career hit at age 34, the youngest player to reach that plateau.
1934 — Helen Hull Jacobs wins the women’s title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships.
1981 — Renaldo Nehemiah sets the world record in the 110 hurdles with a time of 12.93 seconds in a meet at Zurich, Switzerland.
1984 — Lee Trevino beats Gary Player and Lanny Wadkins by four strokes to take the PGA championship at Shoal Creek, Alabama.
1993 — Sergei Bubka wins his fourth consecutive pole vault title at the World Track and Field championships at Stuttgart, Germany.
1995 — Mike Tyson starts his comeback, knocking out Peter McNeeley in 89 seconds at Las Vegas. McNeeley’s manager Vinnie Vecchione jumps into the ring to stop the fight after his boxer is knocked down twice in the first round.
2001 — Michael Schumacher gets his fourth Formula One championship and matches Alain Prost’s series record of 51 victories by winning the Hungarian Grand Prix.
2016 — Usain Bolt scores another sweep, winning three gold medals in his third consecutive Olympics. At the Rio de Janeiro Games, Bolt turns a close 4x100 relay race against Japan and the United States into a typical, Bolt-like runaway, helping Jamaica cross the line in 37.27 seconds. Allyson Felix wins an unprecedented fifth gold medal in women’s track and field, running the second leg of the 4x100-meter relay team.
2018 — Jockey Drayden Van Dyke wins a record-tying seven races at Del Mar, including the $200,000 Del Mar Mile. He ties Hall of Famer Victor Espinoza for most wins in a single day in the seaside track’s history. Van Dyke’s only loss in eight mounts comes when he finishes second in the sixth race.
Aug. 20
1921 — Molla Bjurstedt Mallory beats Mary Browne, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2, to win the U.S. women’s national tennis title held at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia.
1931 — Helen Wills Moody beats Eileen Bennett Whitingstall 6-4, 6-1 to capture the women’s title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championship.
1944 — Robert Hamilton upsets Byron Nelson in the final round 1 up to win the PGA championship.
1960 — Holland’s Hairos II, driven by Willem Geersen, wins the second International Trot at Roosevelt Raceway by a half-length over Italy’s Crevacore. A record crowd of 54,861 watches the race.
1995 — Monica Seles completes a remarkable first week back in tournament tennis play, demolishing Amanda Coetzer 6-0, 6-1 to capture the Canadian Open. She wins in 74 games, setting a tournament record for fewest number played by a champion.
2000 — Tiger Woods wins the PGA Championship in a playoff over Bob May, becoming the first player since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three majors in one year. He’s the first player to repeat as PGA champion since Denny Shute in 1937.
2003 — The United States wins the women’s overall team gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships, the first gold in history for the Americans — men or women — at the biggest international event this side of the Olympics. Romania takes the silver medal and Australia wins bronze.
2004 — Michael Phelps matches Mark Spitz’s record of four individual gold medals in the Olympic pool with a stirring comeback in the 100-meter butterfly, then removes himself from further competition at the games. Phelps nips teammate Ian Crocker at the wall by four-hundredths of a second to win his fifth gold medal. Shortly after winning his seventh medal of these Olympics, Phelps gives up his spot in the medley relay to Crocker.
2006 — Tiger Woods wins the PGA Championship closing with a 4-under 68 for a five-shot victory over Shaun Micheel and his 12th career major. He became the first player to win the PGA Championship twice on the same course, having beaten Sergio Garcia by one shot at Medinah in 1999.
2008 — In Beijing, Usain Bolt of Jamaica breaks the world record in the 200 meter race, winning in 19.30 seconds. Bolt is the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984, to sweep the 100 and 200 gold medals at an Olympics. Bolt is the first man to break the world marks in both sprints at an Olympics — a feat that neither Lewis nor Jesse Owens accomplished. He beat the record of 19.32 set by Michael Johnson at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
2012 — In a historic change at one of the world’s most exclusive golf clubs, Augusta National invites former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore to become the first female members since the club was founded in 1932.
2016 — Allyson Felix and LaShawn Merritt anchor the 4x400 relay teams, and the United States exits the final night of action at Olympic Stadium with 31 medals — the most it has taken in a non-boycotted Olympics since 1956. Matthew Centrowitz shocks the field in a slow 1,500-meter final to become the first American to win gold in the “metric mile” since 1908. The U.S. women’s basketball team handily beats Spain 101-72 for a sixth straight title.
2018 — Alabama becomes the second team to be ranked No. 1 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll for three straight seasons. The preseason AP poll started in 1950 and since then only Oklahoma from 1985-87 had started No. 1 in three straight years.
Aug. 21
1901 — William Larned wins the first of seven men’s singles titles in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championship.
1914 — Walter Hagen captures the U.S. Open golf title by edging Chick Evans.
1920 — Jock Hutchinson wins the PGA golf tournament with a 1-up victory over J. Douglass Edgar.
1931 — Babe Ruth of New York hits his 600th home run as the Yankees beat the St. Louis Browns 11-7.
1932 — Helen Hull Jacobs beats Carolyn Babcock to win the women’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association.
1982 — Mystic Park becomes the first 3-year-old trotter to win the American Trotting Championship.
1985 — Mary Decker sets the world record in the mile run with a time of 4:16.71 in Zurich.
1990 — Kelly Craig becomes the first female starting pitcher in Little League World Series history, opening for Trail, British Columbia. She fails to retire any of the three batters she faces but the Canadian champions rally for an 8-3 victory over Matamoros, Mexico.
2003 — Paul Hamm puts together a near-perfect routine on the high bar to become the first American man to win the all-around gold medal at World Gymnastics Championships. Needing a 9.712 or better to beat China’s Yang Wei, Hamm strings together four straight release moves during his 60-second routine — one of the toughest feats in gymnastics — for a 9.975 and the gold.
2008 — At the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Yukiko Ueno pitches 28 innings in two days, including seven to shut down the U.S. softball team, 3-1, and give Japan the gold medal. It was the first loss for the Americans since Sept. 21, 2000 — 22 straight games. LaShawn Merritt upsets defending champion Jeremy Wariner to lead a U.S. sweep of the 400 meters track event. David Neville gets the bronze. The U.S. men and women both drop the baton in the Olympic 400-meter relays and fail to advance out of the first round. Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown easily wins the 200 meters to cap the first sweep of all four men’s and women’s Olympic sprints in 20 years.
2010 — Kyle Busch makes NASCAR history with an unprecedented sweep of three national races in one week, completing the trifecta with a victory in the Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Busch, winner of the Nationwide race a day earlier and the Trucks race on Aug. 18, becomes the first driver to complete the sweep since NASCAR expanded to three national series in 1995.
2011 — The Los Angeles Sparks run off 16 straight points to overcome a 15-point, second-half deficit and hand the Tulsa Shock their WNBA-record 18th consecutive loss with a 73-67 victory. The Atlanta Dream lost 17 in a row in their inaugural season of 2008.
2016 — Kevin Durant scores 30 points and helps the Americans rout Serbia 96-66 for their third straight gold medal. That caps an Olympics in which the U.S. dominated the medal tables, both the gold (46) and overall totals (121). The 51-total-medal margin over second-place China the largest in a non-boycotted Olympics in nearly a century.
2018 — Liu Xiang of China sets a world record time of 26.98 seconds to win the women’s 50-meter backstroke gold medal at the Asian Games. Liu becomes the first woman to swim under 27 seconds in the event, breaking the mark of 27.06 set by fellow Chinese swimmer Zhao Jing at the 2009 world championships in Rome.
Aug. 22
1851 — The United States wins the first international yacht race. The schooner named “America” beats 14 British yachts.
1885 — Richard Sears beats Godfrey M. Brinley, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, 6-3 to win the U.S. men’s national tennis championship held at the Newport (R.I.) Casino.
1898 — Malcolm Whitman beats Dwight F. Davis, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 to win the U.S. men’s national tennis championship held at the Newport (R.I.) Casino.
1948 — The Chicago Cardinals beat the College All-Stars 28-0 in front 101,220 fans at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
1949 — The Philadelphia Eagles beat the College All-Stars 38-0 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. It’s the largest shutout in the series, later matched by Green Bay in 1966.
1950 — Althea Gibson becomes the first black tennis player to be accepted in competition for the national championship.
1957 — Floyd Patterson knocks out Pete Rademacher in the sixth round to retain his world heavyweight title at Sicks Stadium in Seattle.
1965 — In the third inning of a game against Los Angeles, pitcher Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants hits catcher John Roseboro of the Dodgers in the head with his bat. A 14-minute brawl ensues and Roseboro suffers cuts on the head. Marichal thought Roseboro threw too close to his head when returning the ball to Sandy Koufax.
1984 — Evelyn Ashford sets the world record in the 100-meter dash with a clocking of 10.76 seconds in a meet at Zurich, Switzerland.
1987 — Brazil snaps the 34-game winning streak of the U.S. men’s basketball team with a 120-115 victory in the Pan Am Games. Oscar Schmidt scores 46 points to lead Brazil. Cuba wins a record 10 of 12 gold medals in boxing and beats the U.S. 13-9 in the baseball final.
1989 — Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers becomes the first pitcher to strike out 5,000 batters in a 2-0 loss to the Oakland Athletics. Ryan fans Rickey Henderson swinging on a 3-2, 96 mph fastball for No. 5,000.
1999 — Jenny Thompson breaks Mary T. Meagher’s 18-year-old 100-meter butterfly record at the Pan Pacific swim championships. Thompson with a time of 57.88 seconds lowers the mark of 57.93 set by Meagher.
2007 — The Texas Rangers becomes the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting an American League record in a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles in the first game of a doubleheader.
2008 — Usain Bolt helps Jamaica win the 400-meter relay final in 37.10 seconds for his third gold medal and third world record of the Beijing Games. Bolt becomes only the fourth man, and the first since Carl Lewis in 1984, to win all three Olympic sprint events. Bryan Clay wins the decathlon, the first American to win the 10-discipline event at the Olympics since Dan O’Brien at Atlanta in 1996.
2018 — Ohio State suspends football coach Urban Meyer three games for mishandling repeated professional and behavioral problems of an assistant coach, with investigators finding Meyer protected his protege for years through domestic violence allegations, a drug problem and poor job performance.
2018 — The NCAA ditches the RPI for its own evaluation tool to select teams for the NCAA Tournament. The NCAA Evaluation Tool will rely on game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency and quality of wins and losses. NET will be used for the 2018-19 season by the committee that selects schools and seeds the tournament.
Aug. 23
1898 — Malcolm Whitman wins the men’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championship.
1926 — Molla Bjurstedt Mallory beats Elizabeth Ryan to capture her seventh singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships.
1933 — The first televised boxing match is an exhibition fight between Archie Sexton and Laurie Raiteri, staged at the Broadcasting House in London.
1946 — The College All-Stars beat the Los Angeles Rams 16-0 at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
1947 — The College All-Stars beat the Chicago Bears 16-0, before a record crowd of 105,840 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. It’s the second and last time that the college team won in consecutive years.
1969 — Audrey McElmory becomes the first American to win the world road cycling championship which is held in Brno, Czechoslovakia. McElmury overcomes rain and a fall during the fourth lap of the 62-kilometer race to beat Britain’s Bernadette Swinnerton by one minute and 10 seconds.
1975 — Classical Way completes the trotting sweep by winning the Challenge Cup in 3:07.1 at Roosevelt Raceway.
1987 — Callit wins the International Trot in 2:33.4 at Roosevelt Raceway.
1995 — Denis Pankratov of Russia breaks a 9-year-old world record in the men’s 100-meter butterfly at the European swimming championships in Vienna, Austria with a time of 52.32 seconds.
2004 — The U.S. softball team wins its third straight gold medal with a nearly unblemished romp through the Olympics, capped by a 5-1 victory over Australia. Lisa Fernandez pitches a four-hitter and Crystl Bustos homers twice in the Americans’ best all-around game of the tournament.
2008 — At the Beijing Games, Angel Matos of Cuba and his coach are banned for life after the taekwondo athlete kicks the referee in the face following his bronze-medal match disqualification against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov. Matos is declared the loser for taking too much injury time after hurting his leg. Matos angrily questions the call, pushes a judge, then pushes and kicks referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden.
2012 — Lance Armstrong chooses not to pursue arbitration in the drug case brought against him by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. That’s his last option in his bitter fight with USADA and his decision sets the stage for the titles to be stripped and his name to be all but wiped from the record books of the sport he once ruled.
2014 — Nick Davila passes for 237 yards and eight touchdowns and the Arizona Rattlers win their third consecutive ArenaBowl title with a 72-32 victory over the Cleveland Gladiators.
2015 — Ohio State becomes the first unanimous preseason No. 1 in The Associated Press college football poll. The defending national champion Buckeyes, receive all 61 first-place votes from the media panel in the rankings.
2015 — Usain Bolt wins the 100-meter race at the World Championships in Beijing, edging Justin Gaitlin by 0.01 seconds.
Aug. 24
1904 — Holcombe Ward wins the men’s singles title in the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association singles title.
1908 — Tommy Burns knocks out Bill Squires in the 13th round at Sydney, Australia to retain the world heavyweight title.
1925 — Helen Wills, 19, wins her third straight U.S. Lawn Tennis Association singles title with a 3-6, 6-0, 6-2 victory over Kathleen McKane. An hour later, Wills teams up with Mary K. Browne to win the doubles title.
1929 — Helen Wills wins her sixth U.S. Lawn Tennis Association singles title by defeating Phoebe Holcroft Watson, 6-4, 6-2.
1963 — The Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. is covered by ABC’s Wide World of Sports for the first time.
1963 — Don Schollander becomes the first swimmer to break the two-minute barrier in the 200-meter freestyle with a time of 1:58.4 in a meet at Osaka, Japan.
1963 — John Pennel breaks the 17-foot barrier in the pole vault with a 17-0¾ vault in a meet at Miami.
1988 — Minnesota North Stars forward Dino Ciccarelli is sentenced to one day in jail and fined $1,000 for hitting another player with his stick. Ciccarelli, who was given a match penalty and 10-game suspension by the league for the Jan. 6, 1988 attack on Toronto’s Luke Richardson, is believed to be the first NHL player to receive a jail term for an on-ice attack of another player.
1996 — Hsieh Chin-hsiung sets a Little League World Series record with his seventh home run as Taiwan wins the title for the 17th time with a 13-3 victory over Cranston, R.I.
2001 — Colorado starting pitcher Jason Jennings goes 3-for-5 in his major league debut, including a homer, while pitching a 10-0 complete game shut out over the Mets. The right-hander becomes the first pitcher in modern history to throw a shutout and hit a homer in his first game.
2003 — Jockey Julie Krone becomes the first female rider to win a million-dollar race taking the Pacific Classic at Del Mar aboard Candy Ride.
2007 — The NFL indefinitely suspends Michael Vick without pay just hours after he acknowledged in court papers that he did, indeed, bankroll gambling on dogfighting and helped kill some dogs not worthy of the pit.
2008 — On the final day of the Beijing Games, Kobe Bryant hits two 3-pointers in a big fourth quarter to help the United States defeat Spain 118-107 and win the gold medal for the first time since 2000. China has one of the most dominating and diverse performances at an Olympics ever, winning a games-leading 51 golds and an even 100 overall. The United States finishes with 110 medals and trails well behind the Chinese in golds with 36, the first time since 1992 it doesn’t lead the category.
2008 — Danny Lee becomes the U.S. Amateur’s youngest champion, supplanting Tiger Woods by holding off Drew Kittleson 5 and 4. The 18-year, 1-month-old Lee is six months and 29 days younger than Woods when he won the first of his three Amateurs in 1994.
2014 — U.S. teenager Katie Ledecky slices almost six seconds off her own world mark in the women’s 1,500-meter freestyle, winning in 15 minutes, 28.36 seconds to post her second world record in as many nights at the Pan Pacific championships. It’s her fifth gold medal of the meet and the third time in 13 months she set the mark in the 1,500, and the second in three months since her 15:34.23 at Shenandoah on June 19.
End Adv