Camila Giorgi ended American wildcard Catherine McNally’s dream Citi Open run to book her spot into her seventh career WTA final. STEPHANIE LIVAUDAIS WASHINGTON DC, USA - Camila Giorgi is through to her seventh career WTA final after stopping American wildcard Catherine McNally’s Cinderella run at the Citi Open, winning 7-6(5), 6-2. The resurgent Giorgi was contesting one of the first tournaments of her comeback to action, having spent a lot of time sidelined with wrist and ankle injuries: before this week, she hadn’t won a match since the Australian Open, and competed in just three tournaments and one Fed Cup tie during that time. But that all changed in the American capital, where she’s stormed into her first final of the year. Giorgi took down Sachia Vickery, Rebecca Peterson and Zarina Diyas on her way to the semifinals, having dropped just one set along the way. In the semifinal, she was up against a newcomer in American wildcard McNally. The 17-year-old wildcard has impressed all week long, taking down No.4 seed Hsieh Su-Wei in the last round to earn her first career Top 50 win. But she was ultimately outclassed by the big-hitting Italian, who struck three aces and was broken only once en route to the straight sets victory. PHOTO 2019 Washington, DC highlights: Resurgent Giorgi halts McNally to reach final Camila Giorgi ended American wildcard Catherine McNally’s dream Citi Open run to book her spot into her seventh career WTA final. Giorgi got off to a fast start on Saturday, breaking early to lead 3-0, her flat, booming groundstrokes giving McNally plenty of trouble. But McNally, who likes to pepper a few forays up to the net into her game, needed only a few games to adjust before she was rallying back. She did well to get them back on serve with a late break at 4-2, but the Italian had her running from all over the court. Under pressure, a spate of unforced errors brought the set to a swift end in the tiebreak, with Giorgi taking the lead. Continue on https://www.wtatennis.com/news/resurgent-giorgi-halts-teen-mcnally-reach-citi-open-final

Golden State worth $ 100 million dropped! SOURCE: BETA Golden State basketball player Draymond Green has reached an agreement with the management of that NBA club about a new four-year contract worth nearly $ 100 million. Golden State worth $ 100 million dropped! Photo: Beta / AP Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez Green will thus remain in the Warriors until the end of the 2023/2024 season. The news was first published by I-Es-Pi-En (ESPN), and the Associated Press agency received confirmation from a source who wanted to remain anonymous, as some details of the deal had not yet been agreed. Green will receive close to one hundred million dollars in four years. The reigning five-time Eastern Conference Champion in the NBA has thus managed to secure the remainder of three important players in the coming seasons, as Stefen Curry, Clay Thompson and Greene have contracts until 2022 and beyond. Curry's contract expires in three years, and last month Thompson extended the contract to five years, by $ 190 million. Continue on https://www.sportske.net/vest/kosarka/pao-potpis-u-golden-stejtu-vredan-100-miliona-383691.html

BIRTHDAY WEEK ENDS SUCCESSFULLY FOR DUDA Eduarda "Duda" Lisboa (left) and Agatha Bednarczuk celebrate a bronze medal win Saturday at the A1 Major Vienna Vienna, Austria, Aug. 3, 2019 - Eduarda “Duda” Lisboa turned 21 on Thursday and grew up a little bit more on Saturday. It’s no surprise, considering she was an FIVB age-group world champion six times and she has 13 World Tour titles. Collecting her 14th medal in 30 events as a partner of Agatha Bednarczuk just might have been the breakthrough that the rest of the tour has been fearing. With a bronze medal in the FIVB A1 Vienna Major presented by Swatch on the line against fellow Brazilians Taiana Lima and Talita Antunes, Duda and Agatha trailed by six points with a third set looming, the 36-year-old Agatha stopped talking. How did they turn that deficit into a 2-0 (31-29, 21-19) victory? “Until that point, I was talking to Duda a lot about the game,” Agatha said. “Since that moment, I stayed a little quiet and let her think about the game. She decided what she needed to do. “Normally because of the difference in our age, I’m talking to her about the game and what she needs to do. She needs to decide what the game needs and I think she is learning and she is starting to do what she needs to do.” Duda caught Talita and Taiana with a couple of short serves, which turned into easier defensive and transition opportunities. By the time Duda was finished crushing balls or guiding them to the right spot, she scored eight of her team’s final nine points and that 18-12 deficit was erased. “I hadn’t had a short serve in the entire tournament, so I said let me just try one and it worked,” Duda said. “I wanted so much to win. “We had our defense and blocking strategy set up with our coaches before, so all we changed actually was the type of serves.” The bronze medal was their sixth as a team to go with five golds and two silvers. They were coming off a victory in the Tokyo Open the previous week. “We started changing the game and she decided this,” Agatha said. She told me continue short serves. I was a good listener, she was my teacher at that moment. “We were four players on the court, three old ladies and my younger girl.” It was a heartbreaking finish for Talita and Taiana, who are a new team in 2019 after Talita took a year off for maternity leave. In the semifinals, Talita and Taiana lost a heartbreaking 2-1 (21-16, 35-37, 15-13) semifinal to the third Brazilian team in the semi-finals, Carolina Solberg and Maria Antonelli. Agatha and Duda were swept away by Canadians Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes, 2-0 (21-17, 21-12). It was the longest match of the year on the FIVB tour (1 hour, 20 minutes) and the second set was the fifth-highest in FIVB history. “Maybe we are a little bit tired but that’s beside the point,” Talita said. “At this time of course I’m not so happy, but I have to look behind and see what we’re building. I think we did good things this week.” The bronze match was an hour long and had to be delayed for 53 minutes because of inclement weather. At the time they stopped, it was 28-28 in the first set. The delay meant the gold medal match was postponed until Sunday morning. Pavan and Humana-Paredes, the reigning World Champions, will be going for their third gold medal of the season and sixth as a team. “We won Porec, we won Gstaad, we won Hamburg, the only one missing is this one!” Pavan said of their success in Majors. Carol and Maria Antonelli had to win two qualification matches just to reach the main draw and still haven’t lost in their seven matches in Vienna. It will be their seventh time on the podium together in 29 events and they are trying for their second gold medal as a team. Continue on https://www.fivb.com/en/about/news/birthday-week-ends-successfully-for-duda?id=87484

BACK TO FIVB ALISON & ALVARO OUST WORLD CHAMPIONS AT A1 MAJOR VIENNA PHOTO Brazilian Alison Cerutti (left) blocks against Viacheslav Krasilnikov (center) as Russian partner Oleg Stoyanovskiy follows the action. Vienna, Austria, August 3, 2019 - Alison Cerutti and Alvaro Filho started the schedule off here Saturday morning with a surprise for some, but not shocking for beach volleyball followers as the Brazilians eliminated newly-crowned world champions Viacheslav Krasilnikov/Oleg Stoyanovskiy of Russia in the quarterfinals at the $600,000 A1 Major Vienna presented by Swatch. Seeded fifth in the FIVB World Tour event, Alison and Álvaro posted a 2-1 (14-21, 21-16, 15-11) in a 54-minute quarterfinal match to advance to Sunday's first semifinal contest where the Brazilians will play 14th-seeded Phil Dalhausser/Nick Lucena of the United States in the first match between the two teams. Sunday’s second semifinal features a rematch of last year’s Vienna finalists as top-seeded Anders Mol/Christian Sorum of Norway meet was sixth-seeded Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek of Poland. In the 2018 Vienna gold medal match, Mol and Sorum posted a 2-0 (21-12, 21-17) win in 38 minutes over the Polish pair. Saturday morning’s win was the Brazilians third win in five meetings this season with Krasilnikov and Stoyanovskiy, who netted their world championship title July 7 in Hamburg, Germany. Alison and Alvaro, who are playing in their 11th World Tour event together, placed ninth at the worlds. With their fourth-straight win in the A1 Major Vienna, Alison and Alvaro have now advanced to their third-straight World Tour semifinal and fourth overall this season. The Brazilians placed fourth at last weekend's Olympic dress rehearsal event in Tokyo while topping podiums in April and July at FIVB tournaments in Malaysia and Portugal, respectively. “This is evolution," said the 33-year-old Alison about the trio of final four appearances in the last three weeks. "If you look at us individually, it’s obvious that we should make a good team, but it wouldn’t happen overnight. There’s a lot of work for us to figure out what the best way to play is and even to understand each other as partners. It’s a process and it involved us playing on country-quotas and three-stars, but our coaching staff is doing a great job on that and now we can clearly see what kind of team we can be.” When asked about the tuning the game around after a bad start (7-2 and first set loss), the 28-year-old Alvaro said "the Russians are a great team and they started the match on fire, serving and blocking really well. We were just focused on scoring the next point and communicating well. After that tough start Alison’s block started working, I got to dig some balls, and everything just came together for us.” PHOTO Alison Cerutti (left) and Álvaro Filho of Brazil After the two women semifinal matches on the A1 Major Vienna center court, Dalhausser and Lucena secured their spot in the semifinals by posting a 2-0 (21-13, 21-18) win in 45 minutes over Nils Ehlers/Lars Fluggen of Germany in the first-ever FIVB World Tour match between the two teams. After the match, the 39-year-old Dalhausser said “nothing’s easy out here. There are so many good teams, the Germans had crazy travel, they made the finals in Tokyo and basically had to get on a flight and arrived Monday and started playing on Tuesday. Hat’s off to them for a great tournament and we’re excited we’re in the semis.” When asked about playing against Alison and Alvaro, Dalhausser said “another tough match. Alison and Alvaro have been playing really well. I think this is their third semis in a row, so we’ll have to play well, use this momentum moving forward and take it into that semi. Lucena was asked about his team’s deficit in the second set and said “we knew they were going to steady out. They made some plays and then I believe at 12-9 we got seven in a row, which doesn’t happen that often. We changed up our defense a little bit and started doing more straight-up movements and it worked out. Phil made some blocks and we were pretty fortunate.” PHOTO Americans Nick Lucena (left) and Phil Dalhausser Also posting a Saturday morning quarterfinal victory was Bryl and Fijalek, who scored a 2-0 (21-17, 21-15) win in 40 minutes over 22nd-seeded Pablo Herrera/Adrian Gavira of Spain. PHOTO Hitting at the net is Grzegorz Fijalek (right) of Poland against Spaniard Adrian Gavira After losing to the Spaniards in pool play Thursday, the 28-year-old Bryl said his team "changed our strategy. On Thursday we served Pablo and he absolutely destroyed us. Now we went for Adrian and we decided that I would play his angle shots and Fijalek would defend the line and our tactics worked really well.” Bryl said “Vienna has been a lucky place for us. We made the final right last year and I hope we can do it again this time. We haven’t been playing really well for the last two months and after getting a bunch of ninths we were questioning ourselves if we still could play at last year’s level, but this match showed we can.” In Saturday’s final quarterfinal match, Mol and Sorum scored a 2-0 (21-14, 21-13) in 41 minutes over 25th-seeded Adrian Heidrich/Mirco Gerson of Switzerland. It was the second World Tour meeting between the two teams with Heidrich and Gerson defeated the Norwegian in a pool play match last season Poland. PHOTO Anders Mol (left) and Christian Sorum of Norway After their team won their 17th-straight World Tour match to improve their season record to 59-4 on the FIVB circuit, the 22-year-old Mol said “it was really fun to go out there today, for sure really important. We wanted that victory so bad because we lost to them the last time, we played them. We gave it our all and we’re standing here with a victory and coming to the semifinals. Mol said “it was nice to play one match today. We’ll recover this evening, eat some good food and relax and get ready for tomorrow. We’ve been playing a lot of games lately; our bodies can feel it. We just have to step on the court and give it our all.” Continue on https://www.fivb.com/en/about/news/alison--alvaro-oust-world-champions-at?id=87475

Bad as I Wanna Be by Dennis Rodman A wild ride inside the glowing head of Dennis Rodman--the NBA's greatest rebounder and America's most outspoken and outrageous athlete. When Sports Illustrated put the man they call "America's most provocative athlete" on their cover, they sold more copies than any other issue they had sold in a decade (except the swimsuit issue). Why? Because Dennis Rodman, superstar basketball player who joined the Chicago Bulls for the 1996 season, has more in common with Mick Jagger than with his new teammate Michael Jordan. With his body-covering tattoos and ever-changing fluorescent hair, Rodman's sideline antics and celebrated benchings have captivated sports fans as much as his record-breaking on-court performances and earned him a reputation as a rebel with the same penchant for shocking behavior as his on-again off-again squeeze, Madonna. In Bad as I Wanna Be he shares his surprising and candid opinions on everything from fame, money, and race relations, to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll--and he'll talk about his life, from going to prison for stealing watches to his daughter, the light of his life. At a time when most celebrities and professional athletes try to control their public personas like politicians and refrain from expressing their true beliefs, Dennis Rodman is a refreshingly unique, uncompromising individual who both transcends his world and refuses to conform to it. Bad as I Wanna Be is as candid, intriguing, and unforgettable as he is. Less https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13186.Bad_as_I_Wanna_Be

From 2.7 to 105 million: The most expensive disposals per Bundesligist SLIDE SHOWS ON https://www.kicker.de/754192/slideshow/von-27-bis-105-millionen_die-teuersten-abgaenge-pro-bundesligist

Hamilton hunts down Verstappen for Hungarian GP win 2019 Hungarian Grand Prix summary Written by Keith Collantine Lewis Hamilton took his eighth victory of 2019 by passing Max Verstappen to win the Hungarian Grand Prix. The fight raged between the Mercedes and the Red Bull driver throughout the race. Verstappen stayed ahead of Hamilton when the pair pitted, then withstood a fierce attack from his rival as they picked their way through traffic. The race turned when Mercedes brought Hamilton in for another pit stop. On another set of medium tyres, he chased down Verstappen, whose rubber wilted with half-a-dozen laps to go. Three laps from home, Hamilton easily cruised by the Red Bull on the start/finish straight. Verstappen collected second place after pitting for a set of new tyres and setting the fastest lap of the race. The Ferrari drivers never figured in the fight at the front. Sebastian Vettel, who ran a long first stint and then switched to softs, dived down the inside of Charles Leclerc on the penultimate lap to claim the final podium place. Valtteri Bottas took himself out of contention on the first lap of the race after Hamilton muscled past him at turn three. Leclerc then drew alongside and the pair collided, leaving Bottas with damage. He had to pit early, and after a second pit stop ended the race eighth. Pierre Gasly lost three places at the start and wasn’t able to recover the position he lost to Carlos Sainz Jnr. The McLaren driver therefore beat him to fifth, while Red Bull reclaimed some of Gasly’s lost places when he pitted. A slow pit stop for Lando Norris dropped him down the order. He finished behind Kimi Raikkonen and Bottas. Alexander Albon, despite falling victim to a superb pass by Daniil Kvyat early on, claimed the final point. Continue on https://www.racefans.net/2019/08/04/hamilton-hunts-down-verstappen-for-hungarian-gp-win/

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Update 2019: Zheng zooms up, Tig comeback continues Zheng Saisai - San Jose 2019 - Getty WTA San Jose champion Zheng Saisai and Washington champion Jessica Pegula both hit career highs after collecting their first WTA titles last week, while Karlsruhe 125K champion Patricia Maria Tig's return from maternity leave continues to impress. For video and more access https://www.wtatennis.com/news/wta-rankings-update-2019-zheng-zooms-tig-comeback-continues