for 89 minutes, Boyd made a good reaction save on a short-r

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The four golfers?in contention for the?Race to Dubai?title were upstaged by Lee Westwood in the first round of the DP World Tour Championship on Thursday.Westwood shot a 6-under 66 in swirling winds to take a one-stroke lead at the European Tours season-ending event in Dubai.Some days you feel like theres a lot of birdies out there but today I think was a pretty stiff test, Westwood said.Danny Willett and Alex Noren were best-placed of the players bidding to finish the season as Europes No. 1 after shooting 71s on the Earth course of Jumeirah Golf Estates, while Henrik Stenson -- the leader in the Race to Dubai standings -- shot 72.Rory McIlroy started the week as the big outsider to win the Race to Dubai and his chances are even slimmer after shooting 75, ending a run of 28 straight rounds of par or lower at the World Tour Championship.Should Stenson win, he will be Europes No. 1 for the second time in four years. He could even finish atop the standings with a top-eight finish, provided Willett doesnt win or finish second and Noren doesnt win.The 43-year-old Westwood, who was the winner of the inaugural edition of World Tour Championship in 2009, made just one bogey -- on No. 12 -- on a day when winds made scoring difficult. He had three birdies on the front nine and four on the back nine.It was all good, really. I played lovely, said Westwood, playing without his regular caddie Billy Foster who is out with a knee injury. Hit a lot of fairways, a lot of good iron shots, putted nicely and, you know, didnt make too many mistakes out there.Frances Julien Quesne and Belgiums Nicolas Colsaerts were tied for second place after 67s, while No. 12 Spaniard Sergio Garcia was tied fourth after a 68, along with Italian Francesco Molinari and Dutchman Joost Luiten.Stenson made just one birdie and one bogey, being denied a closing birdie on the 18th after his putt from six feet lipped out.It wasnt my best day. I played very average, Stenson said. Id say the good putts I hit didnt go in, and the bad ones certainly didnt. X_Plr Shoes NZ . -- Matt Kuchar and Harris English ran away with the Franklin Templeton Shootout, shooting a 14-under 58 on Sunday in the final-round scramble to break the tournament course record. Y-3 Shoes NZ . -- The plastic that was taped across the lockers in Oaklands clubhouse came down and the champagne that was on ice went back into the cooler. http://www.nmdshoesnz.com/ . First off, the fans ripped the Cubbies introduction of a fuzzy new kid-friendly mascot named "Clark". NMD R2 Sale Womens . Wilson hit Schenn from behind during Tuesday nights game in Philadelphia, earning a five-minute major for charging and a game misconduct. He has a phone hearing with the department of player safety, which limits any potential suspension to five or fewer games. Originals Superstar NZ . Nine days before the opening ceremony, organizing committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said Wednesday that Sochi is "fully ready" and will deliver safe, friendly and well-run games that defy the grim reports that have overshadowed preparations. The schedule made it the most important week of the season for the University of California womens soccer team. Making it a successful week was left to goalkeeper Emily Boyd.In coming up with a total of 19 saves while allowing just one goal over the 200 minutes of a 1-1 draw against No. 10 UCLA and a 1-0 win against No. 7 USC, Boyd not only steered Cal to its best ever Los Angeles road trip but also left the path clear for a programs first Pac-12 title in nearly 20 years.It sounds like the kind of workload worthy of the espnW national soccer player of the week.The week began with a game at UCLA, a host that surely had a little extra motivation after losing at Cal by seven goals a season earlier. But try as the Bruins might, they couldnt solve Boyd. Nor was she just catching hopeful lobs from long distance to pile up saves that looked more impressive in the box score than on video. When UCLA super freshman Jessie Fleming is showing off a first touch worthy of her Olympic resume to create a chance eight yards from goal, there isnt much margin for error. But there Boyd was, coming off her line just in time to deflect the shot. And there she was in the second half, diving to her right to stop another of Flemings five shots on goal and deadening the rebound enough to corral it without further incident.There was so little margin for error, in fact, that merely being something less than perfect meant the Bears walked offf the field with a tie rather than a win against the Bruins.ddddddddddddAfter meeting every test for 89 minutes, Boyd made a good reaction save on a short-range shot from Courtney Proctor, but she couldnt stop Proctor from volleying the resulting loose ball into the goal to level the score.How did the goalkeeper deal with that frustration? First by saving all three UCLA shots on goal in overtime. But even more importantly for Cals fortunes, after a couple of days to stew on the draw, by making eight saves to keep USC off the scoreboard Sunday.Cals schedule has offered up UCLA and USC in back-to-back games, in one order or the other, every season since 1997. Only once in the first 19 seasons of that arrangement did Cal come away from those two games without at least one loss against those schools -- and that only when they came through the Bay Area in 2011. That more or less sums up Cals existence over that span. It has often been a very good program, just never quite good enough to be the best.Now trailing only Colorado in the Pac-12 standings, and with its rivalry game against Stanford on its own field in early November, Cal has a path to a conference title. And while it is a path with little room to slip up, opponents this past week found it even more difficult to slip one by Boyd. ' ' '