The opening day of the Asian Indoor Athletics Championships was all about Mutaz Essa Barshim, one of the most popular and known sporting icons in the country.
No, Mutaz Barshim couldn’t better his Asian Indoor mark of 2.41m. Nor did he overhaul his season’s best of 2.36, set in Malmo, Sweden, last month.
Some three hundred athletes, 36 different nationalities, as many as 12 defending champions from the last edition, and the world’s largest multi-purpose indoor hall—the three-day Asian Indoor Athletics Championships couldn’t have asked for a stronger field and a better setting.
Coming into the 2016 Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, Branden Grace had won six European Tour titles, but never before had he managed to defend one. Nor had anyone done it in the $2.5 million European Tour event’s 18-year history.
A final-day thriller is in the offing, with the two main protagonists chasing their own piece of history.
There are many things about Jin Cheng that surprise, particularly considering the fact that he’s only 17.
Gregory Bourdy had an early tee-off yesterday, 6.40am to be precise. The conditions were near-perfect—the wind was mild as compared to the opening day’s strong gusts, and it was a clear morning as against Wednesday’s foggy and cloudy skies.
Paul Lawrie is back in contention at his favourite hunting ground with the possibility of a historic treble firmly in his sights.
In the 18-year history of the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, only two men have won the annual European Tour event twice—Adam Scott and Paul Lawrie.
Louis Oosthuizen carries an enviable reputation on the professional tour. Wherever he plays his first event of the year, the 33-year-old invariably goes on to win that tournament. This has happened on four occasions in the last five seasons.
The Commercial Bank Qatar Masters will enter its 19th year when the French-English-Danish trio of Mike Lorenzo-Vera, Matthew Baldwin and Joachim B Hansen tee off at the stroke of dawn at the Doha Golf Club today.
Sebastian Coe couldn’t have asked for a more difficult time to take over the reins of the IAAF (International Association of Athletic Federations).
