Stewart in Line for Title

Tony Stewart made things even tougher for Mark Martin.

Winston Cup points leader Stewart qualified sixth Friday for the season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Fla., while Martin -- the only other driver with a shot at the championship -- will start 34th in the 43-car field. Kurt Busch won the pole.

Stewart leads Martin by 89 points and can clinch his first title by finishing 22nd or better in Sunday’s race, no matter what Martin does.

More bad news for Martin: Stewart won two of the three previous races at the track after starting seventh and 13th.

“We had a good lap,” Stewart said. “We’re normally bad to the bone on Sunday here and our car is really, really good in race trim, so I’m pretty excited about Sunday now.”

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Mike Bliss capped his return to NASCAR’s truck series by winning the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Ron Hornaday, a former truck series champion, won the Ford 200 in a Chevrolet entered only this once as a teammate to Bliss.

Polesitter Bliss finished fifth to win his first title, beating Rick Crawford by 46 points. Ted Musgrave finished second in the race in a Dodge, and wound up third in the standings.

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Bruno Junqueira, in a Lola-Toyota, guaranteed a front-row start for Sunday’s Mexico Grand Prix -- the final CART event this season -- by leading the first day of qualifying with an average speed of 116.703 mph at Mexico City.

Tennis

Lleyton Hewitt has the No. 1 ranking. He also has a semifinal berth at the season-ending Masters Cup, thanks to Carlos Moya.

Hewitt, the defending champion in the eight-man tournament, advanced to the semifinals when Moya outlasted French Open champion Albert Costa, 7-6 (7), 3-6, 6-4, at Shanghai, China. If Costa had won, Hewitt’s season would have been over.

The last semifinal spot went to Juan Carlos Ferrero, who defeated Jiri Novak, 7-5, 6-3. The round-robin portion of the tournament ended when Switzerland’s Roger Federer beat Thomas Johansson, 6-3, 7-5.

Figure Skating

American skater Sasha Cohen got off to a shaky start in Paris in her quest for a second Grand Prix victory.

The 18-year-old completed a solid triple lutz-double toe loop jump during the short program at the Lalique Trophy, but then fell on a much easier double axel. She is in second after the short program behind Japan’s Yoshie Onda. Sarah Meier of Switzerland is third.

Golf

The teams of Hale Irwin-Tom Kite and Mark O’Meara-Tom Watson won the final two matches to lift the United States to a 3 1/2-2 1/2 lead over The Rest of the World on the opening day of the Warburg Cup at St. Simons Island, Ga.

Irwin and Kite beat Rodger Davis and Stewart Ginn, 3 and 2, to get the Americans even. Then O’Meara and Watson beat Barry Lane and Denis Durnian, 2 and 1, to secure the lead.

Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw was one of six people inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.... The LPGA’S Takefugi Classic is leaving Hawaii for Las Vegas next year and raising its purse to $1.1 million. The tournament will be played April 17-19 at Las Vegas Country Club.

Miscellany

Sarah-Gayle Swanson scored two goals and Lindsay Greco and Whitney Jones had one each to lead UCLA to a 4-0 victory over visiting Loyola Marymount in the first round of the NCAA Women’s College Cup.

Earlier, Jessica Edwards scored in the third minute of overtime to lead USC to a 1-0 victory over San Diego.

USC will play UCLA on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Drake Stadium.

In another game at Milwaukee, Megan Woods scored twice to lead Pepperdine to a 2-0 victory over Wisconsin Milwaukee. The Waves will play Wisconsin on Sunday.

Oracle of San Francisco followed Alinghi of Switzerland into the semifinals of the America’s Cup challenger series today, knocking Seattle’s OneWorld into the losers’ bracket at Auckland, New Zealand.

The team founded by Oracle CEO and chairman Larry Ellison completed a 4-0 win in the best-of-seven quarterfinal series with a 33-second win over OneWorld, the largest margin in the teams’ four races.

Alinghi swept defending challenger champion Prada, 4-0, after the Italian syndicate forfeited its race today to concentrate on finetuning for the losers’ bracket.

Mike Powell, the world-record holder in the long jump, was hired as a full-time assistant track and field coach at Cal State Fullerton after serving as a volunteer coach.