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MARANA, Ariz. (AP) — Danny Lee birdied his final two holes for a 2-under 69 and then won LIV Golf Tucson on the second hole of a four-man playoff on Sunday by making a 25-foot birdie putt from off the 18th green for his first win in nearly eight years.

It was the second playoff in LIV Golf since the Saudi-funded series began last year. Dustin Johnson won the playoff outside Boston last year.

Lee finished at 9-under 275 and got into the playoff with Carlos Ortiz (65), Brendan Steele (70) and Louis Oosthuizen (70). Oosthuizen bogeyed the par-5 17th to fall one behind, only to birdie the 18th to join the playoff.

Lee nearly squandered a great chance to win on the first playoff hole when he put his approach 5 feet from the hole on No. 18 on the first extra hole. He pushed it to the right.

Ortiz was eliminated after the first extra hole when he went long off the 18th green, chipped to 6 feet and missed the par putt.

Going back to the 18th hole, Lee again looked as though he wasted a good opportunity when his approach from the fairway missed the green to the right, leaving him a tough spot with the pin all the way to the right side of the green.

Oosthuizen and Steele both missed long birdie putts. Lee chose to use putter, even though he was some 10 feet off the green. He gave it a rap and it was going fast when it rattled against the pin and disappeared for the winner.

“I haven’t won since 2015. I thought winning just not my thing. Today has changed that,” said Lee, who signed with LIV Golf in February when he was No. 267 in the world.

His last victory was the Greenbrier Classic, which no longer is a PGA Tour event but will be part of the LIV Golf schedule this year.

“It’s good to see I’m capable of playing good golf again,” Lee said.

Ortiz led the Fireballs to the team victory, winning handily over the 4 Aces with Lee’s Ironheads team coming in third.

Charles Howell III, who won LIV Golf’s season opener at Mayakoba, had the lead after a good start. But he took a triple bogey on the par-3 eighth, and then failed to birdie the par-5 17th. He shot a 72 and finished one shot out of the playoff.

Lee won $4 million from the $20 million purse for individual play, which was roughly as much as he made the last four seasons combined on the PGA Tour.

LIV Golf now takes a week off before resuming at a new tournament in Orlando, Florida, the weekend before the Masters.

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Bernhard Langer remained in position Saturday in the Hoag Classic to break a tie with Hale Irwin for the PGA Tour Champions victory record.

Langer played the final five holes in 5-under — going birdie-eagle-par-birdie-birdie — for a 5-under 66 and one-stroke lead with a round left. The 65-year-old German star tied Irwin at 45 victories a month ago in the Chubb Classic in Florida.

“Just really played well, gave myself lots of opportunities,” Langer said. “And like the eagle, as good as three shots as I can possibly pull off.“

Langer opened with a 64 on Friday for a share of the first-round lead with Miguel Angel Jimenez and Chris DiMarco. Jimenez shot a 67 on Saturday to fall a stroke back with Doug Barron (66) at Newport Beach Country Club.

Langer won at the course in 2008. On Saturday, he offset three birdies with three bogeys on the first 13 holes. He pitched in for birdie on the par-3 eighth.

“The chip-in on 8, or the pitch-in, it was a miracle,” Langer said. “You give me 10,000 balls, I wouldn’t make another one, I think. It was one of those kind of shots. The eagle was huge as well.”

Fred Couples was two strokes back with Brain Gay. The 63-year-old Couples, the 2010 and 2014 winner at Newport Beach, had a 66. Gay shot 65. Charles Schwab Cup leader Steve Stricker was tied for seventh at 8 under after a 68.

Canadian Mike Weir is tied for seventh at 8-under, four shots off the lead. Stephen Ames of Calgary is tied for 58th at 1-under.

“I think anybody within five shots of the lead has a chance,” Langer said. “So, there’s a whole bunch of guys and big names, good players. I have to go low, yeah. Even par’s not going to do it, or a couple under. I’ve got to go better than that.”

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ST. FRANCIS BAY, South Africa (AP) — Matthew Baldwin claimed his maiden title on the European tour in style Sunday by storming to a seven-shot victory at the SDC Championship in South Africa.

Baldwin finished with a 4-under 68 on the St. Francis Links course for 18 under overall as his challengers fell away.

There was no pressure on him as he came home but Baldwin still collected five birdies and just one bogey in his final round for a first win 11 years after he first earned his card to play on the European tour.

The Englishman had to put his career on hold in 2015 because of illness and lost his card the following year. His comeback to the tour was then delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and he said his long-awaited victory was dedicated to his stepfather, who died last year.

“I’m not 100 per cent sure what’s just happened,“ the 37-year-old Baldwin said. ”It’s been a tough few years so obviously to get the win means absolutely everything.

“I can’t process it right now but it just means the world to me.“

Baldwin was tied for the lead overnight with Norway’s Kristian Krogh Johannessen, although both still had five holes to play in their third rounds because of delays caused by high winds.

While Baldwin finished off his third round with three more birdies, Johannessen dropped a shot and couldn’t make that up in the final round, where his four birdies were canceled out by four bogeys to finish with a level-par 72 for 10 under and a tie for third.

Spain’s Adri Arnaus finished second on his own with a 5-under 67 taking him to 11 under.

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INDIAN WELLS, Calif. – Top-seed Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz dispatched Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime from the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament Thursday night.

Alcaraz earned a straight-sets 6-4, 6-4 quarterfinal victory over Auger-Aliassime. The eighth-seeded Canadian came into the match having won all three of his previous meetings with Alcaraz, including one in Canada’s upset win over Spain in the round-robin stage of last year’s Davis Cup.

Auger-Aliassime was appearing in the quarterfinals of the Masters-level event for the first time. He advanced with a dramatic 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (6) win over Tommy Paul on Tuesday, overcoming six match points,

The Canadian fired six aces in the match but double-faulted six times. Alcaraz also has as many aces (two) as double faults.

But Alcaraz broke Auger-Aliassime three times in 12 opportunities., The Canadian converted one of his four break chances.

In women’s doubles action, Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Brazilian partner Luisa Stefani lost their quarterfinal match 6-2, 7-6 (4) to Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia and Japan’s Miyu Kato.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2023.

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Lindsay Brandon is a lawyer whose past clients include athletes disputing doping suspensions. In her new post as the WTA’s first director of safeguarding, Brandon is leading an increased effort to protect athletes from predatory coaches — and others — on the women’s professional tennis tour.

“Safeguarding is about emotional abuse. Physical abuse, as well. And it’s not just coach-athlete,” Brandon said in a telephone interview from the BNP Paribas Open, which wrapped up Sunday in Indian Wells, California, and was the first tournament she visited as part of the job she began 3 1/2 months ago.

“There are other people that are part of this process,” Brandon told The Associated Press. “There can be athlete-to-athlete issues. There can be issue with respect to training staff separate from coaches. Those are just some of the examples.”

Her priorities include managing the WTA security team’s investigations of complaints — she did not reveal how many are currently active — and “monitoring any potential concerns,” along with improving education and creating a safeguarding code of conduct she hopes will be published in 2024.

The aim of that code, which Brandon said is separate from a general code of conduct that already exists, is to create a rulebook that outlines behavioral standards and establishes procedures to follow if a matter arises. It will apply to anyone who is credentialed “in the WTA environment,” Brandon said, including players, coaches, physiotherapists, other members of entourages, tournament staff and tour staff.

“Safeguarding is multifaceted and strongest when the entire population is educated, invested and held to the same standards. … We have a diverse body of players, staff and support teams, so the challenges and areas of concern will vary. As the governing body, our focus is making sure that players feel they can come forward and share their concerns, which plays a critical role in being able to address the issues that may be at hand,” WTA Chairman and CEO Steve Simon said in an email to The Associated Press.

Might be hard to gauge the success of such an initiative so soon, but Simon found at least one positive measure.

“We are seeing more athletes coming forward,“ he said, ”which is a great initial result.”

Adding what Simon called “the expertise of a dedicated safeguarding position” is the biggest public-facing step taken by the Florida-based WTA in this area since the issue of protecting players drew increased attention last year: A French player once ranked as high as No. 39 accused her former coach of rape; another player sued the U.S. Tennis Association for failing to protect her from a coach she says sexually abused her at one of its training centers when she was 19; 2002 International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Pam Shriver , who won 21 Grand Slam titles in women’s doubles, said she “had an inappropriate and damaging relationship with my much older coach” that began when she was 17 and he was 50.

“Maybe we need to talk more to players and tell them what’s going on with everything so they know to be careful,” said two-time Grand Slam finalist Ons Jabeur, a 28-year-old from Tunisia. “Maybe it’s never enough and we should do more.”

Simon expressed a similar sentiment during an interview at the tour’s season-ending championships in November.

“We have … background checks on our coaches. We have an athlete assistance program in place. We have mental health experts who are here to help if there’s an emotional issue. We have all sorts of education programs. We have investigators coming in,” he said. “One of the things that we’re educating everybody on is: We need to help ourselves. If you see it, you need to report it. We need to work with our players to have them learn to set up the appropriate boundaries around themselves and what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Brandon, who said she played tennis through high school and for one tournament in college, came to the WTA after about seven years working for Howard Jacobs, a well-known sports lawyer who recently helped tennis pro Varvara Lepchenko get a doping ban reduced from four years to 21 months.

“Lindsay’s knowledge in this area (applicable rules, inappropriate behavior, etc.) is likely more in-depth than anyone the WTA could have hired for this role,” Jacobs wrote in an email to the AP.

Brandon planned to travel to the Miami Open, where play begins Tuesday, and “as many tournaments as I reasonably can this year,” including smaller events where younger players compete.

“The earlier you can provide support and outreach to these athletes, the better,” Brandon said. “I tell people that I don’t want to just be a response resource; I want to be a support resource and a preventative resource, as well.”

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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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