Tryon Earns PGA Card

Ty Tryon, the 17-year-old golfer with a man-sized game, became the youngest player to earn a PGA Tour card Monday when he closed with a bogey-free six-under-par 66 to easily finish in the top 35 at qualifying school.

Tryon started the final round at breezy Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., three strokes out of the top 35 and needing his best score of the six-day tournament to get his card. He had a 66 in mind and delivered, making one of the most gut-wrenching days in golf look like child’s play.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said Tryon, who finished at 18-under 414 and in a tie for 23rd, nine strokes behind winner Pat Perez. “Tonight when I go to sleep, I’ll know that I’m on the PGA Tour.”

He’ll have to wait seven months.

The PGA Tour adopted a new policy in September that players be 18 before they can become members.

Tryon turns 18 on June 2.

Until then, he can accept sponsor’s exemptions to seven tournaments and play no more than 12. He will not show up on the PGA Tour money list until June.

Tryon was playing junior golf a year ago and burst onto the stage at the Honda Classic in March.

A Monday qualifier, he became the youngest player in 44 years to make the cut on the PGA Tour. He was 16 at the time, and wound up in a tie for 39th.

In July, he was tied for the lead after one round of the B.C. Open and finished tied for 37th.

Tryon made it through all three stages of Q-school, with 12 of his 14 rounds under par.

“I’ve always said that [Tiger Woods’] competition will come from the youth,” Jack Nicklaus said after watching his son, Gary, earn his card. “This might be one of the kids.”

Back problems have caused Jack Nicklaus to withdraw from this weekend’s Hyundai Team Matches at Monarch Beach Golf Links in Dana Point. Nicklaus, who teamed with Tom Watson to win the Senior PGA Tour division of this match-play event the last two years, will be replaced by two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North.

The competition features players from the PGA, LPGA and Senior PGA Tours. Monarch Beach Golf Links is hosting the event for the first time.

Horse Racing

The Breeders’ Cup confirmed that next year’s eight-race, $13-million card would be run at Arlington Park in suburban Chicago.

The date for the 19th Breeders’ Cup is Oct. 26. The tentative site and date for the 2003 Breeders’ Cup is Oct. 25 at Santa Anita. Breeders’ Cup officials had said previously that Churchill Downs is likely to be the host in 2004 and that the 2005 races could be run at Lone Star Park near Dallas.

“We will continue negotiations,” said D.G. Van Clief, president of the Breeders’ Cup, regarding a return to Santa Anita for the first time since 1993. “There are still a couple of issues to be resolved, but I’m reasonably confident that we will be able to get together.”

Olympics

A test recently hailed as a breakthrough against the endurance booster EPO was described as nearly obsolete.

The World Anti-Doping Agency predicted that the current urine test to detect artificial EPO would soon be overtaken by spinoffs that are indistinguishable from the body’s natural hormone.

Though it voted to back the International Olympic Committee’s combined blood-and-urine EPO test, WADA said it would push research on a simple blood test that would detect the difference.

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Elta Cartwright Stromberg Henricksen, the first American woman to qualify for a U.S. Olympic team in track and field, died Thursday in Fortuna, Calif. She was 93. A native of Eureka, she was known as Elta Cartwright when she won the 100 meters at the 1928 Olympic trials. .

The U.S. women’s national hockey team cut forwards Brandy Fisher and Kathleen Kauth and defenseman Nicole Uliasz, bringing its roster to 22.