Soccer

PEBBLE BEACH — High school kids clamored for photos on Gareth Bale’s walk from the No. 17 green to No. 18 tee. Then, after he completed his round, adults along the rope line repeatedly asked him to pose for quick selfies. The man does have nearly 50 million (!) Instagram followers. Bale, a former soccer player from Wales (he retired last month), made his AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am debut Thursday at Spyglass Hill. And the spectators absolutely noticed — as did Joseph Bramlett, the PGA Tour pro (and Stanford alum) who played alongside Bale. “He’s got such an enormous following and he’s had such an enormous impact on people around the world,” Bramlett said. “He’s the face of Wales, in many ways. I really admire the way he carries himself, for someone to be that influential and not walk around like they are all that.” Bale and Bramlett share an agent (Matt Reilly), which is how they came to know each other in the past year, mostly via FaceTime. Bramlett said Bale has become a … [Read more...] about Soccer’s Gareth Bale makes a splash in his Pebble Beach Pro-Am debut

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 15 Back at the very beginning, right when the idea of water polo in Ghana started swimming into reality, Asante Prince got out a couple of balls and caps in front of a handful of curious kids. He decided to try a scrimmage, but he had no nets. So they put a soccer bench on each side of the pool. It was “enthusiastic confusion,” he said. And the caps — which have protective cups that go over a player’s ears — well, they were particularly amusing. “Somebody said, ‘Oh, water brassiere, thank you very much,’ a water bra,” a chuckling Prince said. That was one of the first meetings of the Awutu Winton Water Polo Club, a budding league in a tough part of the world for the Olympics’ oldest team sport — and a true passion project for the energetic Prince. Growing up in Coronado, California, he was often the only … [Read more...] about Ghana water polo grows as sport looks for more diversity

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 The bid to bring a WNBA franchise to Oakland took a critical step forward Thursday, as the city formally announced it reached a deal with the group leading the expansion effort for exclusive negotiating rights on its half of the Coliseum site. Alana Beard, front woman of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, is close to completing and submitting the proposal to the WNBA. The league previously had stated an intent to move forward with expansion in December, but delayed that into this year. “Alana is leading that project,” said Ray Bobbitt, an East Bay native who is head of the Black-owned team of developers. “She is getting to a point where there could be a proposal submitted soon. The league was initially saying December of last year, but now that has been expanded out, and I think that they’ve changed the dynamic of the expansion process.” Beard, a former WNBA player, … [Read more...] about Oakland WNBA bid a step closer with exclusive negotiating rights to Coliseum site

close Video Tucker: Hunter Biden is demanding laptop repairman goes to jail Fox News host Tucker Carlson weighs in on new developments in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! You know you're living in a non-democracy when it's dangerous to displease the ne'er do well children of the supreme leader. If you were, for example, at a red light in pre-invasion Baghdad and Uday Hussein came screaming up behind you, drunk in his Lamborghini, you got the hell out of the way, and you did not complain about it. And you didn't complain about it because Uday's dad ran the place and you did not want to make him mad. You might wind up like the members of his personal soccer team who dared to miss penalty kicks. That's what third world countries are like. All citizens are not equal in countries like that. Power derives from proximity to power, and that means the second most powerful … [Read more...] about TUCKER CARLSON: Hunter Biden versus laptop repairman doesn’t seem like a fair fight