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Woods builds big margin at Sherwood

THOUSAND OAKS, California (AP) — Despite trouble with his swing, Tiger Woods still shot a 5-under 67 to widen the gap Saturday in the Target World Challenge.

Woods overcame some crooked shots with a few clutch putts, none bigger than a 35-footer for par on the 14th hole when Jim Furyk was poised to turn the final golf tournament of the year into a two-man race.

Four holes later, it was a one-man show.

Furyk dumped his next tee shot into the water to take double bogey, Woods finished off his round with a birdie, and the tournament host and defending champion found himself six shots clear going into the final round.

Those two holes there were the difference, said Woods, who was at 18-under 198.

Furyk didn’t play poorly except for his 6-iron on the 15th that he said barely hit the grooves. He wound up with a 69 and earned another date with Woods in the final round Sunday.

Masters champion Zach Johnson played bogey-free but only had three birdies on another glorious day in the Santa Monica mountains, with his 69 leaving him seven shots behind.

Johnson was asked how far behind was too far.

What’s Tiger at — 18 under? What am I, 11? That’s too far, he said. Part of it is who’s in front of you. It shouldn’t be part of it, but when it comes to one individual, that’s part of it.

Woods has never lost a tournament in 11 years as a pro when leading by more than one shot going into the last round. And he already is a three-time champion at Sherwood Country Club.

Woods was asked what advice he would give someone trying to make up a six-shot deficit.

Make a lot of birdies, he said, smiling.

Woods made them seven of them, but the bigger shots were for par. Starting the round with a four-shot lead, he kept his margin with an imaginative pitch from about 30 yards short of the 10th green, hooding his sand wedge for the ball to skip up the slope of the green and stop 2 feet away for birdie.

But on each of the next four holes, Furyk looked as though he would pick up a shot.

Woods hit his drive well to the right on the par-5 11th, so severely blocked by trees that he pitched out nearly sideways, and he wound up holing an 18-foot putt to match birdies with Furyk. On the next hole, Woods got up-and-down from a bunker while Furyk missed a bending birdie putt from 8 feet.

The big blow came on the 14th.

Woods found a huge clump of mud on his ball from the middle of the fairway, and his approach sailed left and plugged into the side of a bunker. The best he could do was blast out some 35 feet past the cup.

Furyk, coming off a birdie on the 13th to reach 14 under, was already in for par when he watched Woods posed over his putt and quickly lift his putter when the ball disappeared.

It looked like it could have been a two-shot gap, and ended up a five-shot gap real quick, Furyk said. Tiger has a way of keeping the pedal down … and now it’s six.

Henrik Stenson, who watched Woods’ course-record 62 on Friday, made five birdies in a seven-hole stretch on the back nine for a 65, the best round of the day, and was at 10-under 206.

I would have to shoot another 65 to get to where he’s at now, and I don’t see him shooting over par, Stenson said. It feels like at the moment I’m in the race for second place, unless something really out of the blue happens.

The only out-of-the-blue moment was Woods losing his swing, especially after looking so sharp for two days in his first competition since Sept. 30 at the Presidents Cup. But he was searching on the range, and he never quite found it.

Not that it stopped him. He pushed his tee shot into the rough on No. 1, hit sand wedge to the green and made the putt. He pulled his next tee shot so far left that he plunked some kid on the elbow, laid up on the par 5 and hit wedge to birdie range.

But there was a bogey from the bunker on No. 4, a missed 3-footer on the eighth for another bogey, and plenty of times when would dropped the club in disgust. But he couldn’t help but be satisfied by the finish — not only the birdie, but the margin.

In some respects, it felt better than his 62 the day before.

When you turn rounds that potentially feel like even par or maybe 1 over to under par, and you’ve actually been able to increase your lead, those feel great, he said. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Eight-limb girl leaves hospital after surgery

BANGALORE, India (AP) — A 2-year-old girl who was born with four arms and four legs left a hospital in southern India on Saturday, little more than a month after surgeons successfully removed her extra limbs.

The surgeon who led more than 30 doctors in the marathon surgery said Lakshmi was making good progress and should be mobile soon.

Lakshmi is fine and stable, chief surgeon Dr. Sharan Patil told The Associated Press. She should face no problem in walking.

Lakshmi was born joined at the pelvis to a parasitic twin that stopped developing in her mother’s womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped twin.

A team of more than 30 surgeons performed a 24-hour operation on Nov. 7 at the Sparsh hospital in Bangalore, the capital of southern Karnataka state. They removed the extra limbs, transplanted a kidney from the twin and reconstructed Lakshmi’s pelvic area.

Lakshmi is a hero, Patil said Saturday.

Lakshmi, who never turned (over) earlier, started turning after the surgery. She was even able to stand for 10 minutes on the bed holding the window grill, which is remarkable, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Patil as saying.

Lakshmi’s parents said they were taking her back to their rural village in eastern Bihar state where she had been revered by some as an incarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess she was named after. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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I-Reporters in a damaged Midwest now face snow

VIDEO PHOTOS
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Bill would ban military slot machines

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A bill in Congress seeks to eliminate military slot machines overseas that take in $130 million a year, mostly from soldiers.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tennessee, named the bill after Army Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot who became addicted to gambling on military slot machines.

Walsh eventually was discharged from the Army. He committed suicide after several failed attempts to break his addiction.

The Defense Department uses slot machine revenues to pay a small portion of its morale, welfare and recreation programs.

Davis said the money raised off the gambling of soldiers is not worth the risks.

If American men and women are willing to serve our country overseas we should not be dependent on them to pay for recreational activities they deserve, Davis said in a written statement. The risks are simply too high and too many to ask that of our soldiers.

The bill’s introduction comes after Walsh’s story was featured in a CNN investigative report. His widow, Carrie Walsh, described how her husband’s life spun out of control while the military refused to intervene. Watch interview with widow of gambling-addicted soldier

The military has this culture of taking care of their own, Carrie Walsh told CNN. But it seems like when it comes to this, they just profited from his addiction and then threw him away.

Carrie Walsh said that in 2005 her husband lost more than $20,000 in military slot machines. He went AWOL, only to be found sitting in front of a video slot machine on a military post in Seoul.

He was forced to resign from the Army and spent time homeless on the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 2006, Walsh returned to Maine and tried to reconnect with his wife and their two small children, but his gambling addiction continued. On September 26, 2006, Walsh, 34, went to Maine’s Baxter State Park and killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

The Army operates 3,000 slot machines on overseas posts, raising $130 million in revenue each year. Other branches of the military operate their own gaming programs.

University of Illinois business professor John Kindt, who has studied gambling addictions and the military, agrees with Davis that the money raised is not worth the risk. He says the military should find other ways to entertain troops.

It shouldn’t be about exploiting our service personnel and putting families and their children at risk, he told CNN.

In a statement released by the Pentagon earlier this year, Undersecretary of Defense Leslye Arsht said gambling on bases and posts provides a controlled alternative to unmonitored host-nation gambling venues and offers a higher payment percentage, making it more entertainment oriented than that found at typical casinos.

The Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh Stop DOD-Sponsored Gambling Act would prohibit the military from operating slot machines on military bases. The legislation was introduced Wednesday afternoon.
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Midwest buried under heap of snow

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (AP) — Parts of Kansas received more than a foot of snow Saturday morning as winter storms punched the nation’s midsection.

Packed snow covered streets and highways in Kansas as hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners endured another day without electricity.

We’ve had no fatalities or pileups, but we have numerous slideoffs, said Mary Beth Anderson, a Kansas Highway Patrol dispatcher. I don’t think there are a lot of travelers, just the ones who have to get out and go to work.

More than 2,300 people were in Kansas shelters Saturday because of power outages from last weekend’s ice storm and the fresh snow, said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the state adjutant general.

We just opened the National Guard armory in Russell because of the amount of people needing shelter, Watson said. I think they’re mostly travelers because of the highway conditions there.

Winter storm warnings and watches extended from Missouri across parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the National Weather Service said.

Up to 15 inches of snow was forecast in sections of southern Michigan, with 10 inches possible in Detroit.

Oklahoma utilities said about 181,000 homes and businesses still had no electricity. Some 62,000 were still blacked out in Kansas.

The first several days, crews were working on emergency restoration and getting the backbone of the structure up — the main feeders and transmission lines, said Stan Whiteford, a spokesman for Public Service Co. of Oklahoma. Now they’re really getting into the neighborhoods. The customers are coming on in bigger chunks.

The latest storm was expected to cross the Ohio Valley and reach the Northeast early Sunday with a threat of ice and heavy snow. Watch what’s in store for the East Coast

In Chicago, some flights were canceled Saturday morning at O’Hare International Airport and flights were delayed by 15 to 30 minutes, said Department of Aviation spokesman Gregg Cunningham.

Oklahoma residents were mostly spared as the latest storm moved the brunt of the bad weather to Kansas and Missouri.

The National Weather Service canceled heavy snow warnings for Oklahoma early Saturday. In the central part of the state, the system brought only cold, light rain during the night, turning to snow during the morning. One to 3 inches of snow was forecast. See how winter storms form

Last weekend’s storm coated much of the Plains with ice before dumping heavy snow on New England. It killed at least 38 people, mostly in traffic accidents, including 23 in Oklahoma alone. See photos of the Northeastern storm

At its height, a million customers in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri were blacked out.
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