Sports Briefs

GOLF

Lydia Ko maintains No. 1 position in World Ranking

Despite reports about Ariya Jutanugarn of Thailand becoming the new No.1 golfer in the world, Lydia Ko will be maintaining her top spot in the World Ranking for another week.

Last week, the LPGA projected that there will be a new World No.1 after the ShopRite Classic. However, that happened to be incorrect, as they’ve discovered a bug in the projection tool. In their projection, the LPGA forgot to exclude the 2015 Manulife LPGA Classic, which led to a calculation error.

Throughout the past two years, Ko earned 418.48 points in 50 tournaments and Jutanugarn earned 475.38 points in 57 tournaments.

According to the new world ranking on Monday, Ko leads Jutanugarn by 0.01. This will be the 85th consecutive week for Ko to maintain her top spot.

However, since Ko and Ryu So-yeon will be taking another week off, it is very likely for Jutanugarn to be the new world’s top golfer after the Manulife LPGA Classic starting on Thursday.

Ryu stays third in the Rolex World Ranking at 8.11 points, but with a missed cut at the ShopRite Classic, Ryu fell behind Ko and Jutanugarn in the World No.1 points system.

After winning the ShopRite Classic, Kim In-kyung’s ranking moved up by seven spots, from 30th to 23rd.

BASEBALL

Despite loss to Nationals, Ryu maintains his edge

Ryu Hyun-jin of the Los Angeles Dodgers lost another game against the Washington Nationals on Monday at the Dodgers’ Stadium. The Dodgers lost 4-2. In seven innings, Ryu gave up seven hits, including a home run, and four runs. This was the first time Ryu pitched for seven innings and he had the most number of pitches, a total of 102. Ryu recorded his sixth lost of the season and his ERA increased from 3.91 to 4.08.

But the loss against the Nationals was understandable as their batters are ranked first in scoring, averaging 5.68 runs as of Tuesday, and in batting average, with 0.277 as of Tuesday. The biggest improvement in Ryu’s pitching was speed. During the game, the fastest pitch was 150.9 kilometers (93.8 miles) per hour. This is the first time since his shoulder surgery in 2014 that he has pitched in the 150s. And his fastball percentage increased from 26 percent against the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday to 45 percent.

By Kang Yoo-rim