Mickelson, Seeking a $1-Million Prize, Has Two-Shot Lead

With a precision short game in a swirling wind, Phil Mickelson held off Bernhard Langer’s challenge to take the lead Saturday after three rounds of the Million Dollar Challenge at Sun City, South Africa.

Mickelson’s three-under-par 69 left him at 204, 12-under for the tournament, two strokes ahead of Langer going into today’s final round. The winner receives $1 million--golf’s richest top prize.

Langer shot a 67 and was one stroke ahead of Nick Price, who shot a 68. Davis Love III and Ernie Els were at 209, with Love shooting a 74 and Els a 70.

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Steve Pate and Meg Mallon tied with Dan Forsman and Catriona Matthew in the third round of the JCPenney Classic that pairs an LPGA and a PGA golfer on each team.

Pate and Mallon shot a better-ball seven-under-par, bogey-free 64 on the Innisbrook Resort Copperhead Course at Tarpon Springs, Fla. The winners get $375,000.

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Dave Stockton and his son, Ron, who almost won the Father-Son Challenge the last two years, jumped into the first-round lead of this year’s event at Windsor Golf Club in Vero Beach, Fla.

Playing a scramble format, they shot a 12-under-par 60 on the 6,709-yard course for a two-stroke lead over defending champions Raymond Floyd Sr. and Raymond Floyd Jr. and Bob and David Charles.

The second and final round is today. The father of the winning twosome will receive $150,000 from the $850,000 purse. All of the fathers are major championship winners.

Baseball

The Arizona Diamondbacks opened their wallet again, signing free-agent right-hander Willie Blair to a three-year, $11.5-million contract.

But Blair cost the Diamondbacks less than half of what they reportedly offered Darryl Kile, who agreed to a $24-million, three-year deal with the Colorado Rockies.

Blair was 16-8 with a 4.17 earned-run average last season with the Detroit Tigers and made $875,000. He was especially strong in the second half, going 12-4 in his final 17 appearances.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays announced that the 16,000 tickets available for opening day (March 31) against the Detroit Tigers sold out in 17 minutes. More than 100 people waited in line overnight.

E. Miles Prentice, a New York City lawyer, has added his name to the list of potential buyers of the Kansas City Royals, according to the Kansas City Star. Prentice said his application to formally request access to the team’s financial records was a month ago, meeting the Royals’ self-imposed deadline. Prentice also said he would not attempt to move the franchise from Kansas City.

Boxing

Herol Graham, 38, scored a unanimous decision over Vinny Pazienza, 34, at Wembley, England.

Graham built an early lead and held off a late comeback by Pazienza to keep his World Boxing Council super-middleweight title.

Luisito Espinosa of the Philippines stopped Argentine challenger Carlos Rios in the sixth round of a 12-round fight at Manila to retain his World Boxing Council featherweight title.

Winter Sports

Katja Seizinger won her third race in a row at Lake Louise, Canada--this time a Super-G event--after skiing to victories Thursday and Friday in separate World Cup downhill events.

She ran through the rock-hard 6,294-yard, 31-gate Super-G course in 1 minute 14.71 seconds. Her German teammate, Hilde Gerg, was second in 1:15.04.

At Beaver Creek, Colo., Hermann Maier of Austria, the former bricklayer emerging as one of the world’s great Alpine skiers, capped a magnificent visit to America by winning the first Super-G of the World Cup season.

Maier, 25, who won the World Cup giant slalom in Park City, Utah, two weeks ago and was second in the downhill on Beaver Creek Mountain on Friday.

At Predazzo, Italy, Jani Soininen of Finland won his second consecutive ski-jumping World Cup event to increase his lead in the season’s overall standings. . . . At Heerenveen, Netherlands, Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann of Germany broke her own world record and won a women’s 3,000-meter World Cup speedskating race with a time of 4:07.80. Niemann-Stirnemann broke her own existing world record time, set in 1994, by 1.52 seconds despite a relatively slow opening lap of 31.9 seconds.

Gunther Huber steered Italy-1 to a easy victory in a two-man Bobsled World Cup race at Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, and Canada’s Pierre Lueders retained his lead in the overall standings. . . . Austrian Gerhard Gleirscher scored his first victory on the luge World Cup circuit in men’s singles, beating by two-time Olympic champion Georg Hackl of Germany at Igls, Austria. American Wendel Suckow, the 1993 world champion, finished fourth to become the first to clinch a spot on the U.S. Olympic luge team.

Miscellany

Martina Hingis defeated Lindsay Davenport, 6-4, 6-3, and Anke Huber upset Iva Majoli, 6-3, 6-4, in the semifinals of the Master of Champions tournament at Frankfurt, Germany. Hingis, ranked No. 1 in the world, is unbeaten in this round-robin tournament.

A referee at a high-school football playoff game in Parrish, Ala., was punched and pulled to the ground as a mob of Parrish High fans surrounded him after their team lost, in part because a last-minute drive came up short on a first-down measurement.

Diana Munz, a high school sophomore from the Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, upset Olympic gold medalist Brooke Bennett in the 800-meter freestyle final at the U.S. Open Swimming Championships in Indianapolis. Munz, 15, won in 8 minutes, 36.23 seconds, 0.65 seconds ahead of Bennett.

Katie Smith scored 28 points, including nine in overtime, as the Columbus Quest defeated the Atlanta Glory, 87-79, in an American Basketball League game in front of 3,829 at Columbus, Ohio.

Michael Williams gained 128 yards in 33 carries as Long Beach defeated Hancock, 13-7, in the Simple Green Orange County Bowl football game at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.