GOLF ROUNDUP : Tiger Woods in Position to Repeat in U.S. Amateur

Defending champion Tiger Woods beat one 43-year-old in the U.S. Amateur semifinals Saturday to earn the right to play another in the 36-hole final today at Newport, R.I.

Woods, who became the youngest amateur champion last year, will face George Marucci, who ended 18-year-old Steve Scott’s bid to replace Woods as the youngest champion.

The last repeat champion was Jay Sigel in 1983.

Woods, 19, advanced with a 2-up victory over Mark Plummer, a liquor salesman from Manchester, Me. He consistently drove longer than Plummer, but kept him in the match by missing a string of birdie putts on the back nine at Newport Country Club.

“It’s just one of those days when you hit what I would consider perfect putts,” Woods said. “And I just hit edge after edge after edge.”

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Vijay Singh strung together five birdies on the front side to storm past Jim Gallagher Jr. and take a two-stroke lead after three rounds of the World Series of Golf at Akron, Ohio.

Singh, seeking his third victory on the PGA Tour this season, shot a five-under-par 65 and was at five-under 205 through 54 holes at Firestone Country Club.

Gallagher, who led after each of the first two rounds, shot an even-par 70 Saturday and was at 207.

Singh, a 32-year-old native of Fiji, opened with a par, then birdied the next five holes. He rolled in a 25-footer at No. 2, an eight-footer at No. 3 and a 10-footer after hitting a 180-yard eight-iron through a gap in the trees on No. 4. On the 210-yard, par-three fifth, he hit into the bunker but holed it from 60 feet. He closed the run by hitting an eight-iron within four feet at the sixth hole.

“Out of the five birdies, I had two miracles,” Singh said. “I mean, holing a bunker shot! And you should have seen the shot I hit on four. I was deep in the bushes and trees. It just came out as a one-in-a-million shot.”

PGA champion Steve Elkington was disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard.

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Jenny Lidback, 32, a multilingual Peruvian-born Swede who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., mastered the hard, brown greens at Beaconsfield Golf Club in Montreal to shoot a four-under-par 68 at the $1-million du Maurier Classic. At eight-under 208, Lidback held a one-shot lead over Sweden’s Liselotte Neumann, 29, after 54 holes on a sun-baked course.

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Isao Aoki shot a six-under-par 66 for a two-stroke lead over Bob Charles, Hale Irwin and Mike McCullough after the second round of the Bank of Boston Senior Classic in Concord, Mass.