Etihad Airways to sponsor Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Etihad Airways has signed a three-year deal to become the title sponsor of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which will start with the inaugural race in 2009. The event will be officially known as the FORMULA 1™ Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. “To have secured the title sponsorship for the inaugural FORMULA 1™ Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and beyond is a tremendous honour for Etihad Airways and will enable the airline to increase its reach to a global audience,” said James Hogan, Etihad Airways’ chief executive. “The ‘2009 FORMULA 1™ Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix’ will be an historic occasion for the UAE’s capital and Etihad looks forward to welcoming thousands of F1 spectators from across the world to Abu Dhabi.” Welcoming the Etihad Airways announcement, Formula One Group CEO Bernie Ecclestone said: “Securing a title sponsor of this calibre two years out from the first event is further reinforcement that the region is full of excitement and anticipation for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.” The race will take place on a new 5.6-kilometre circuit currently being built on Yas Island, a natural 2,550 hectare island situated on the east coast of Abu Dhabi. The track, designed by Hermann Tilke, will be one of the longest and most demanding circuits in the world.

FIA cancels 2008 McLaren hearing

The FIA has announced that the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) has agreed to cancel next year's hearing into the report on McLaren’s 2008 car. The meeting had been scheduled to take place on February 14, 2008. Last week, McLaren admitted that leaked Ferrari data had been more widely disseminated within the team than they had previously thought and publicly apologised. In the statement, the squad also promised to suspend development of systems on their 2008 machine that might have been inspired by the Italian team’s confidential information. As a result, FIA President Max Mosley asked members of the WMSC for their consent to cancel the hearing and draw a line under the matter.

The FIFA World Player Gala: LIVE!

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On the evening of Monday 17 December, the FIFA World Player of the Year 2007 will be crowned. At the end of the gala in Zurich, we will discover the names of the two winners who have been selected by the coaches and captains of every national football team around the world. Everyone is curious to find out whether Kaka, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, and Cristiane, Marta or Birgit Prinz have won the ultimate accolade. Be among the first to know by following the event on FIFA.com.

Can there be any greater honour that being voted best player in the world by your contemporaries? Surely not, which is why the FIFA World Player Gala 2007 is one of the most hotly anticipated events of the year. As you would expect, FIFA.com will be on hand again this year to provide the most complete coverage of the proceedings.

The real innovation this year is that you will be able to follow the gala in full and for free on live video, direct from the Zurich Opera House and beginning at 20:00 CET. The broadcast will last for 52 minutes, during which time you will see the stars, the action and highlights from the year, all with a musical soundtrack which builds up to the announcement of the winners. And if this still is not enough, then during the show you can read articles all about the nominees, the winners of the Fair Play award and the FIFA President.

Interviews, red carpet and reactions
Before the curtain is raised, you can get into gala mood by reading portraits of the six nominees and articles about the previous winners, before the press conference with the finalists is shown live on video at 16:00 (CET). The conference is often an emotional event - who can forget Marta's tears of joy three years ago or the warm embrace shared by Samuel Eto'o, Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry, who have since become team-mates, in 2005?

Still not sated? Video interviews with the finalists will be broadcast throughout the day and bulletins sent from the "red carpet" right up until the start of the ceremony. Galleries will provide a photographic record of the evening, while the players' reactions will be sent straight from the mixed zone as soon as the announcements have been made.

As if that were not enough, there are screen-savers ready to be downloaded which will be updated after the event. Stay tuned - the show is about to begin!

Milan and Urawa light up Yokohama

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Despite a glowing winter sun, there was a real chill in the air as the fans took their places at Yokohama's International Stadium on Sunday afternoon. The good news was that temperatures were predicted to rise as the last day of action unfolded at the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2007.

By the time Urawa Red Diamonds and Etoile Sportive du Sahel emerged to contest the match for third place, the weather had indeed improved slightly. As for the game itself, the home side received warm encouragement from their exuberant supporters as they took on the African champions.

The two sides played out an open encounter that could have swung either way and eventually finished 2-2, and it was the Reds who emerged victorious 4-2 on penalties.

That represented the best ever placing for an Asian team in the competition and, having scored twice, Urawa's Brazilian striker Washington could bid farewell to the Land of the Rising Sun with the feeling that his work was done.

"We're pleased, it's the best result we could have hoped for," he explained after the match. "Of course we dreamed of lifting the trophy in front of our fans, but it makes sense that Milan and Boca made it to the final.

"It makes me happy to say goodbye to Urawa's extraordinary supporters with this brace. That's what I hoped for and I'm very emotional this evening. I'd like to thank everyone and I'll never forget the people of Urawa." His parting homage was worthy of the FIFA Fair Play award itself, which appropriately enough went to the Japanese side.

Milan and Kaka on top of the world
There was not a free seat to be had as the closing ceremony then thrilled the crowd ahead of the main event. At the same time, banners honouring Milan and Boca Juniors were unfurled with pride while those praising Urawa and Etoile were taken down.

The final itself had been billed as a rematch of the 2003 Intercontinental (Toyota) Cup, so it was supremely fitting that the two rivals were locked at a goal apiece at half-time. Four years ago, Matias Donnet had levelled after Jon Dahl Tomasson put the Italians in front, and this time Filippo Inzaghi struck first on 21 minutes, only for Rodrigo Palacio to respond two minutes later.

The comparisons ended there, however, and Milan were simply too strong for the Xeneizesafter the restart. Alessandro Nesta, Kaka and Inzaghi all found the back of the net in the second half to give the Rossoneria 4-2 victory, the heaviest in FIFA Club World Cup final history.

The Japanese night began to fill with the chants of the Milanese tifosi, but for Kaka there was more success to come. Having helped his team lift the trophy, the Brazilian playmaker was awarded the tournament's Golden Ball, beating team-mate Clarence Seedorf and Boca's Palacio to the honour. There could have been no better way to underline Milan's dominance in the competition.

Team International captain Annika Sorenstam (SWE) retained her status as the top all-time Lexus Cup points leader when she claimed a dominating 4&3 victory in singles action over Team Asia's Candie Kung (TWN) on Sunday. Kung took the lead from Sorenstam earlier in the week with a 3&2 win in her foursome match over, coincidentally, Sorenstam and Scotland's Catriona Matthew. Kung and partner Ayako Uehara (JAP) halved their four-ball match the following day, while Sorenstam and Matthew fell 1 down in their match against Team Asia captain Se Ri Pak (KOR) and In-Kyung Kim (KOR). Entering Sunday's first singles match with nearly identical Lexus Cup records, Sorenstam finished off her third year as Team International captain with a win, giving her an all-time Lexus Cup record of 6-2-1 (6 ½ points overall), and Kung a record of 5-2-2 (6 points overall).

Amy Hung, the Survivor Celebration campaign and the Marathon of Miracles (MOM) Foundation have joined forces to help defeat breast cancer. Hung, an LPGA Tour member since 2004, has become the spokeswoman for the Survivor Celebration campaign and the MOM Foundation in an effort to urge more women to get regular breast exams. The 27-year-old will also promote a new product from Daphne's Headcovers—a Survivor Celebration Sponsor—and the Pink Scorecard Days program, which helps to raise money for breast cancer support during normal rounds of golf.

It has been a trend for LPGA Tour rookies to go undefeated in Lexus Cup competition (Paula Creamer, 2005; Seon Hwa Lee 2006), and 2007 was no exception. In-Kyung Kim (KOR) capped off a perfect stretch in match play with a 2&1 win over Team International's Stacy Prammansudh on Sunday. Earlier in the week, Kim teamed with Team Asia captain Se Ri Pak (KOR), and the duo won both their foursome match against Morgan Pressel (USA) and Stacy Prammanasudh (USA), 2&1, and their four-ball match against Team International captain Annika Sorenstam (SWE) and Catriona Matthew (SCO), 1 up.

Also concluding her rookie season on Tour was Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year Angela Park (BRA),

Click here to learn more about Bobbi Salmon.>>

Even after a physician finally diagnosed that she had scleroderma in 2003, the 24-year veteran of women's professional golf was still in the dark.

“I had never heard of it,” said Salmon, a longtime LPGA Teaching and Club Professional (T&CP) and PGA of America member who has competed on the Legends Tour. “I thought I could just take a pill and get rid of it.”

Unfortunately, the autoimmune disease affects some 300,000 Americans. In the same family as lupus, the condition causes the body to produce too much collagen, which hardens the skin. Systemically, the disease can affect the human organs. If it reaches the lungs and causes them to harden, breathing may become difficult or impossible. At this time, there is no known cure.

“This disease is really kind of getting to me now and my hands bother me a lot,” said Salmon, who moved back home to Durham, N.C., after having earned honors in 2001 as one of Golf For Women Magazine's Top 50 Teachers while serving as the Director of Instruction at Errol Estates Country Club in Apopka, Fla. “I can't stand out there for three to four hours a day teaching anymore.”

Moving away from teaching has been a difficult transition for the always-active Salmon, who has added competing in Legends Tour events to her extensive playing resume. Salmon has won the LPGA T&CP's Southeast Section Championship twice and the Southeast Team Championship numerous times. She has competed in four Women's British Opens, two U.S. Women's Opens and two McDonald's LPGA Championships.

But these days, she swallows 15 different medications each night and has taken an oral chemo drug for a year that helps slow the symptomatic tightness and hardening of her skin. As the disease has progressed, Salmon also has lost up to 30 percent of her lung function.

Rather than simply surrendering to the ravages of the disease, Salmon has, instead, vowed to help raise funds for scleroderma research. Along with 30-some other LPGA teaching professionals across the nation, she has helped raise $70,000 for the Scleroderma Foundation and scleroderma research through golf clinics, playing lessons and tournaments. They called that effort the Scleroderma Teaching Project.

“I think that's when I realized how many wonderful friends I have,” she said. “Everybody wanted to help in some way.”

Salmon wasn't always a golfer, however. A former collegiate volleyball and softball player at Appalachian State University (N.C.), she even recalls thinking what a “ridiculous game” golf was when she worked at a golf course as a college student. But at age 24, she taught herself to play and a year later, qualified for the 1985 U.S. Women's Open.

“I won the qualifier in a playoff and had no idea what I had done,” she said, laughing. “I was too stupid to know it was hard.”

But Salmon qualified for the Women's Open again in 1992, then went on to compete professionally in Asia, Europe and in the early days on the FUTURES Golf Tour – now named the Duramed FUTURES Tour.

“I was never a great ball striker, but I leaned how to get it around the golf course,” she said.

Her dream was to make it to the LPGA Tour, but that never happened. Salmon settled into teaching golf and joined the LPGA's T&CP division in the early 1990s, honing her game mostly against other teaching professionals and club pros. Once she turned age 45, she competed in a qualifier for the Legends Tour and earned a spot on the Tour, where she has played since 2001.

“I never made it to the big tour, but it was just amazing to be out there on the Legends Tour playing with people like Pat Bradley and Joanne Carner – and then to sometimes beat them was like, Wow!” said Salmon. “But those players have all ‘been there and done that' in golf. They didn't know me, but they accepted me and invited me to spend time with them.”

And when those same Hall of Fame players learned of Salmon's current health challenge, they also wanted to do something to help. They decided to donate all proceeds from ticket sales at this year's Handa Cup to the foundations serving patients and research for scleroderma.

“Scleroderma is a disease that doesn't get enough recognition,” said Legends Tour president Jane Blalock. “It was particularly important that we support her since one of our own Legends suffers from scleroderma and dedicates her time and resources to awareness and research of this disease.”

Salmon says she still hopes to hold a celebrity pro-am with fellow members of the Legends Tour to raise money and awareness for scleroderma. And even though the same number of Americans suffer from scleroderma that suffer from multiple sclerosis, the awareness level doesn't even compare.

Salmon has “good days and bad days” with her current state of health, but she is pleased that her fellow Legends Tour competitors can help the public understand more about the disease that has affected her so dramatically.

“Even with the Scleroderma Teaching Project [fund raiser] that we ran all over the country, so many people have wanted to know about the disease,” she said. “They want to touch my skin and ask me questions. Some days, I get really frustrated by how this disease makes me feel, but the education that comes from talking about it really excites me.”

The LPGA was never at a loss for story lines in 2007; Lorena Ochoa dominated many of them. But the season also found the LPGA acquiring the Duramed FUTURES Tour, and launching a new logo and online merchandising store. Historical moments included the hosting of the RICOH Women's British Open at the Old Course at St. Andrews—the historic ‘birthplace' of golf—and seeing the induction of Se Ri Pak into the LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Fame.

Ochoa tops on Tour | Pettersen wins once, five times | Major Championship winners all first-timers
Se Ri Pak inducted into Halls of Fame

Se Ri Pak inducted into the LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Fame

When Se Ri Pak's final putt dropped on the 18th hole of the first round of the 2007 McDonald's LPGA Championship Presented by Coca-Cola, Pak officially qualified for entrance into the LPGA Tour and World Golf Halls of Fame, one of the most difficult in all of sports in which to gain entry. As a rookie in 1998, Pak took the Tour by storm, becoming the only rookie since Juli Inkster (1984) to win two major championships in her rookie year. Pak earned the requisite 27 points needed to qualify for the Hall of Fame with her victory at the 2004 Michelob ULTRA Open at Kingsmill. She met the 10-year LPGA Tour membership requirement at her 10th event in 2007—the McDonald's LPGA Championship, which was her very first victory on Tour in 1998.

Among her successes and achievements, Pak has been a leader and mentor for the 45 Korean LPGA Tour members in 2007. Pak joined Annika Sorenstam and Mickey Wright—now Hall of Fame peers—as the only players in Tour history to win the same event five times when she captured the 2007 Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic Presented by Kroger.

Pak was honored at the annual induction ceremony at the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Fla., on Nov. 12.

Major Championship winners all first-timers

Morgan Pressel jumps in the water with her caddie Jon Yarbrough and her grandmother Evelyn Krickstein.

Ochoa's victory in Scotland capped off a season in which all four of the LPGA major championships were the first major victory for the winners. It was the first time since 1995 when Nanci Bowen (Nabisco Dinah Shore), Kelly Robbins (McDonald's LPGA Championship), Annika Sorenstam (U.S. Women's Open) and Jenny Lidback (du Maurier Ltd. Classic) were all first-time major championship winners.In April, second-year Tour member Morgan Pressel carded a final-round, bogey-free 3-under-par 69 and edged out Catriona Matthew, Suzann Pettersen and Brittany Lincicome by one stroke to become the season's second Rolex First-Time Winner. Pressel finished prior to the final group and waited on the driving range anticipating a playoff. Instead, she won outright and she, her caddy and her grandmother, Evelyn Krickstein, made the traditional jump into Poppie's Pond to celebrate the win. Pettersen rallied from the disappointing finish at the Kraft Nabisco Championship and won the McDonald's LPGA Championship Presented by Coca-Cola by one stroke over 35-time Tour winner Karrie Webb. This marked the second of five wins for Pettersen in 2007.For Cristie Kerr, she had trophies—nine from her 11 years on the LPGA Tour, including three from 2006—but none from a major championship. After two rounds at the U.S. Women's Open she was 1-over-par, but then shot up the leaderboard with a third-round 5-under-par 66 to take a one-stroke lead into the final round. Kerr carded a final-round 1-under-par 70 for a two-stroke win over Lorena Ochoa and rookie Angela Park to win her first major championship at the U.S. Women's Open.

To close out the year was Ochoa. It was as if she had saved her first major win for the 2007 RICOH Women's British Open on the Old Course at St. Andrews; a week already steeped in history and tradition, a perfect place to make more history. Despite windy and cool conditions and rounds suspended due to darkness, Ochoa went wire-to-wire for the win, which was the 13th of her career.

Pettersen wins once, five times

Not since Nancy Lopez won nine times during her rookie year in 1978 has a Rolex First-Time Winner won five events in the same season. Suzann Pettersen, of Norway, however, overcame two disappointing runner-up finishes at the Safeway International Presented by Coca-Cola and Kraft Nabisco Championship early in the year to find her breakthrough victory via a three-hole, sudden-death playoff against Jee Young Lee at the Michelob ULTRA Open at Kingsmill. One month later, she captured her first LPGA career major championship title at the McDonald's LPGA Championship. Pettersen had a fruitful October as she won three of four LPGA Tour events she entered. She defeated Rolex Rankings' top player Lorena Ochoa in a playoff at the Longs Drugs Challenge. She also won two events in the Tour's three-week Asia swing: the Hana Bank • KOLON Championship and Honda LPGA Thailand 2007 in back-to-back weeks. With an incredible career-best $1,802,400, she ended the year second to Ochoa on the LPGA Official Money List.

Ochoa tops on Tour

“Lorena Ochoa” and “number one” have become synonymous over the past year. She set out in 2007 to make her name one that made competitors think twice about their chances at victory that week. And they do. In April, she took over the number one position in the Rolex Rankings—a position that had previously only been held by Annika Sorenstam since the Rolex Rankings were released in February 2006. Eight wins were added to Ochoa's resume, which included her first major championship victory at the RICOH Women's British Open—the first women's professional golf tournament hosted at St. Andrew's legendary Old Course. That win pushed Ochoa over the $2 million mark in season earnings. She was also the first Mexican-born player to win a major championship on the LPGA Tour, which was the first of three consecutive victories on Tour. Ochoa also notched 13 additional top-10 finishes in just 25 starts, which led to her second consecutive Rolex Player of the Year and Vare Trophy awards. In becoming the first player to earn $3 million and $4 million in a season, Ochoa also became the fastest to earn $10 million in 4 years, 8 months and 5 days (124 events), shattering Annika Sorenstam's previous benchmark of 8 years, 5 months and 3 days (183 events). Ochoa also led the Tour in the following statistical categories: birdies (383); rounds under par (66/89, 74.2 percent); rounds in the 60s (44/89, 49.4 percent); top-10 finishes (21/25, 84 percent); greens in regulation (73.1 percent); scoring average (69.6854); and putts per GIR (1.76).

In the area of philanthropy, Ochoa was just as busy—and determined to make a difference. She not only opened golf academies in her native country of Mexico, but also schools for elementary-aged children through the Lorena Ochoa Foundation, which provide students with a proper education and meals. After Ochoa's million-dollar victory at the ADT Championship, she pledged $100,000 to the flood victims of Tabasco, Mexico.