American team makes run at World Cup

The United States made seven consecutive birdies to end the front nine, vaulting up the leaderboard. Wales finished its day with five straight, and Scotland strung together four in a row to put itself into contention.

Still, they’re all looking up at Sweden and Argentina entering today’s final round of the final World Golf Championships event of the year in St. James, Barbados.

Welcome to a suddenly close-knit World Cup, which seemed destined to be an Argentine runaway before the leaderboard turned into one giant cluster at Sandy Lane. Sweden (63) rallied to finish Saturday 16-under-par and with a one-shot lead over Argentina (67), with Scotland (65) another shot back.

After the Scots, it’s a seven-way tie for fourth at 11 under – with Wales (62) and the U.S. (63) making big third-round moves to get into that cluster, along with Italy (64), Mexico (65), Spain (67), South Africa (67) and Germany (68).

Baseball

Rangers re-sign Padilla

Pitcher Vicente Padilla is staying with the Texas Rangers, agreeing to a $33.75 million, three-year contract that includes a $12 million club option for 2010.

The signing keeps one of the top free-agent starters with a team desperate for pitching. Padilla went 15-10 with a 4.50 ERA.

•Pitcher Jason Marquis is likely to become the latest acquisition in the Chicago Cubs’ off-season spending spree.

Marquis and the Cubs are negotiating a three-year contract, a person with knowledge of the talks has said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement had yet been made.

Terms have not yet been agreed to – the deal is likely to be in the $20 million range.

•The New York Mets prohibited Jose Reyes from playing winter ball, not wanting to take any chances with the health of their star shortstop.

The 23-year-old Dominican had expressed interest in playing in the winter league for the Cibao Gigantes.

Football

No Sun Bowl for Perry

Oregon State offensive guard Jeremy Perry will miss the Sun Bowl because of a left knee sprain, coach Mike Riley announced.

The 6-foot-2, 313-pound sophomore was injured in the Beavers’ 35-32 victory at Hawaii.

•Watson Brown, the coach who oversaw UAB’s move to Division I-A during 12 seasons but suffered through a disappointing 3-9 year, resigned and was introduced as the coach at Tennessee Tech hours later.

“The time is right, and this is a great opportunity to make a quick move and really improve the Golden Eagles football program to the point where we can win conference championships and make a run at a national championship,” Brown said.

Miscellany

South tops North

South Korea defeated North Korea 3-0 to reach the semifinals of the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, in a politically charged soccer game that comes amid talks of uniting the rival teams for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

South Korea has beaten the North six of 10 times in this soccer rivalry.

The North and South have been involved in talks aimed at forming one team for major sports events. Officials met in Qatar to work out a plan but there was no resolution.

•Old Dominion’s Wendy Larry became the 30th women’s basketball coach to win 500 games when the Lady Monarchs beat Chicago State 77-38 in Norfolk, Va.

•France’s Laure Manaudou broke her world record in the 400-meter swimming freestyle at the European Short Course Championships in Helsinki, Finland.

She finished in 3 minutes, 56.09 seconds to beat the mark of 3:56.79 she set at last year’s championships in Trieste, Italy.

•Downhill and super-G races scheduled for Saturday and next Sunday on the women’s World Cup circuit in Val D’isere, France, were canceled because of lack of snow and warm weather.

The International Ski Federation said on its Web site the course was declared unfit after inspection. A possible replacement site could be decided tomorrow.

Two other women’s events already have been canceled because of the weather.

•Evgeni Popov led Russia to a convincing victory in a four-man bobsled race that closed out the season’s second World Cup competition in Park City, Utah.

•Boboman left a good impression in his first graded stakes race, rallying to win the $250,000 Hollywood Turf Cup at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif.

Ridden by Garrett Gomez, Boboman covered 1 1/2 miles on the turf in a stakes record time of 2:24.61 and paid $20.40, $10 and $4.40. Runaway Dancer returned $20.60 and $6.