Match-play event tough on favorites

The remaining top four seeded players went down, and so did the defending champion.

The often unpredictable Match Play Championship more than lived up to its reputation in a topsy-turvy second round at Dove Mountain in Marana, Ariz., on Thursday. An event already minus Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson sent several of the world’s best to an early exit.

Lee Westwood, Jim Furyk, Martin Kaymer and Rory McIlroy -- seeded second through fifth -- were among the losers.

Defending champion Geoff Ogilvy was beaten by Colombian Camilo Villegas, 2 and 1. Top-seeded Steve Stricker lost Wednesday in the first round.

The highest remaining seeded player is England’s Paul Casey at No. 6. Casey, the runner-up a year ago who won the World Match Play Championship in England in 2006, swiftly dispatched Canadian Mike Weir, 5 and 4.

The field was narrowed to 16 for Friday’s third round on the sun-drenched desert course near Tucson.

Joe Durant birdied five of the final eight holes for a seven-under-par 64 and a one-stroke lead in the PGA Tour’s Mayakoba Golf Classic at Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

The 45-year-old Durant, a four-time tour winner, played the front nine in two under, then birdied Nos. 11-13 and 16-17 for a back-nine 30 on the Mayakoba Resort’s Greg Norman-designed El Camaleon course.

Norway’s Suzann Pettersen made a tap-in eagle on the par-five 18th for a six-under 66 and a share of the first-round lead with South Korea’s M.J. Hur in the season-opening Honda PTT LPGA Thailand at Pattaya.

TENNIS

Peer rolls on at Dubai event

Shahar Peer appears unstoppable at the Dubai Championships one year after the Israeli was denied a chance to play in the tournament in the United Arab Emirates.

Peer beat a seeded player for the third time in four matches and advanced to the semifinals with a 7-5, 3-0 win over Australian Open semifinalist Li Na, who retired from the match because of back spasms.

The unseeded Peer will face defending champion Venus Williams, who defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 6-3, 6-4.

Top-seeded Robin Soderling advanced to the quarterfinals in the Open 13 at Marseille, France, with a 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 win over Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine.

ETC.

High school star is shot to death

A high school football star who had signed to play at Vanderbilt University was shot to death early Thursday by his mother’s ex-boyfriend shortly after police arrived to investigate a report of a person with a weapon, authorities said.

Officers heard four or five gunshots about 2:30 a.m. as they arrived at the Powder Springs, Ga., home where Rajaan Bennett, 18, lived with his mother, Maj. Charles Spann said.

Inside they found Bennett, a running back at McEachern High who was rated among Georgia’s top college football prospects, dead of a gunshot wound.

Boyd said Clifton Steger, 39, of Milledgeville shot Bennett and then killed himself.

USC football Coach Lane Kiffin confirmed that he has hired Clay Helton as quarterbacks coach.

Helton was Memphis’ offensive coordinator in 2009.

The 2010 Urban Invitational this weekend features games at the MLB Urban Youth Academy in Compton involving UCLA, Cal State Northridge and historically black institutions Bethune-Cookman University and Southern University. The annual round-robin collegiate baseball tournament begins Friday and ends Sunday.

Tickets to the games at the academy will be available on game day for $5.

Children 12 and under and any student with a valid student ID get in free.

Proceeds will benefit the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy.