Brooks Opens Early Lead

In a tournament expected to be a shootout among golf’s dominant foreign stars, Texan Mark Brooks opened up a two-shot lead - over mostly Americans - in the first round of the Nestle Invitational.

Brooks finished off a 7-under-par 65 on Arnold Palmer’s surprisingly docile Bay Hill Club course that left the vast majority of the game’s leading lights well back.

Palmer shot 73.

American Brian Watts fired a 69 and tied for the first-round lead with Taiwan’s Chen Tze-ming and Japan’s Hisayuki Sasaki in the Dydo Drinco Shizuoka Open in Hamaoka, Japan.

Beth Daniel and Laura Davies shot 4-under 69s in Phoenix to share the lead in the $700,000 Standard Register-Ping tournament by one stroke.

Wendy Ward, an Arizona State senior who won the U.S. Women’s Amateur title last August, and pros Carolyn Hill, Lauri Merten and Tina Barrett also carded 69s.

Gymnasts strike gold Mar Del Plata, Argentina Amy Chow and Amanda Borden combined for two gold medals and Shannon Miller won two more herself as the U.S. women’s team completed its smashing run through the Pan Am Games by sweeping all the gold medals.

For Chow, the win in the vault competition was her first major gold medal. She added a silver in the uneven bars.

Borden won a gold the balance beam, then picked up a silver in the floor exercise as the U.S. team came within one silver medal of a medals sweep, which it accomplished in 1963.

It was Miller, though, who had the biggest night of all, winning the floor and uneven bars to run her Pan Am total to four gold and one silver.