Sampas Wins His 500th Singles Match

Top-ranked Pete Sampras reached the semifinals of the ATP Tour World Championship in Hanover, Germany, on Friday and gained his 500th singles victory, beating Yevgeny Kafelnikov, 6-4, 6-4.

Boris Becker, the defending champion, lost to Thomas Enqvist, 6-3, 7-6 (7-1). Becker, who turned 29 Friday, already was assured of a place in the semifinals.

The $3.3-million event brings together the top eight players in the world, with the two top finishers from each four-man group advancing.

In today’s semifinals, Sampras will face Goran Ivanisevic, ranked No. 4 in the world, and Becker will meet Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek, who finished with two straight aces in beating Thomas Muster, 7-6 (7-4), 6-7 (7-5), 6-3. Krajicek had 23 aces in the match.

Golf

Emilee Klein, who has yet to make a bogey in two days, shot a four-under-par 68 in gusty winds to take a one-shot lead over Juli Inkster midway through the season-ending LPGA Tour Championship at Las Vegas.

Two shots back were Karrie Webb and Laura Davies, long hitters who are battling not only for the season money title, but the chance to become the first LPGA golfer to win $1 million in a season on the tour.

“I just hit it the way I know how to hit it,” said Klein, who was at seven-under 137 after two rounds. “I’ll never hit it as long as Karrie Webb or Laura Davies.”

Overcoming gusty winds and driving rain, Tiger Woods shot a par 72 and almost certainly made the cut for the final two rounds of the Australian Open at Sydney. Woods, who opened the tournament with a seven-over 79, is nine strokes behind clubhouse leader Rolf Muntz of the Netherlands on a day when 38 players, including leader Greg Norman, didn’t finish because of the rain.

Ernie Els and Wayne Westner birdied the final hole to help South Africa maintain a one-stroke lead over Scotland in the World Cup of Golf at Capetown, South Africa. Both South Africans shot par 72s for 140 totals, giving the team an eight-under 280 total after two rounds. Scotland was second at 281, with Denmark and France tied for third at 285. Another stroke back was the United States team of British Open champion Tom Lehman and U.S. Open winner Steve Jones. Both shot 70s Friday. The U.S. team is trying for a record-tying fifth consecutive title.

Jurisprudence

Investigators in Cassopolis, Mich., say five members of the Southwestern Michigan College basketball team raped an 18-year-old woman and videotaped themselves in the act. The woman, also a student, had passed out after drinking at a party at an apartment house near campus, authorities said.

Prosecutor Scott Teter said the eight-minute tape that had been circulating around campus was seized from one of the men and clearly identifies the attackers. It shows the sex acts were not consensual--the woman was drunk and “physically helpless.”

The athletes, all freshmen, were expelled from the junior college after their Nov. 7 arraignment.

Olympics

The transportation and technology woes that plagued Atlanta’s Summer Games stemmed from complicated logistics and intransigence of organizers, an IOC official says. Marc Hodler of Switzerland, IOC vice president in charge of overseeing Utah’s Winter Games in 2002, said Atlanta’s problems are unlikely to be repeated by Salt Lake City.

“It probably [will be] much easier here,” said the head of the International Ski Federation, who was meeting with Salt Lake Organizing Committee officials.

Hodler said some of Atlanta’s problems developed because local organizers would not listen to Dick Pound, the IOC vice president who headed the coordination commission for the Summer Games.

Pro Football

Eight of nine Canadian Football League teams lost money this season, and some fear that the 84th Grey Cup championship game, which will be played Sunday, will be the last. The CFL was afflicted with small crowds and cash bailouts to keep teams in Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver afloat.

The 120-year-old Ottawa Rough Riders folded earlier this month at the end of the regular season.

The Toronto Argonauts--led by former Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie--and the Edmonton Eskimos play for the title in Hamilton. The cash-strapped Eskimos could not afford to fly players’ wives to the game.

CFL Commissioner Larry Smith said he is interested in “building a relationship” with the NFL, but that the CFL will not become a triple-A minor league.”

Miscellany

Russia’s Alexei Urmanov, the 1994 Olympic champion, won the Nations Cup men’s figure skating competition in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Germany’s Mandy Woezel and Ingo Steuer won the pairs competition.

An appeals court in Boston upheld a lower court ruling that Brown University had discriminated against women athletes by dropping two women’s sports in budget cuts in 1991, but the court said the school could submit a new plan to comply with Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sexual discrimination at schools that receive federal money.