Nick Mulvenney

The huge galleries following the final round match-up between Tiger Woods ("Laohu" to the locals) and Phil Mickelson at the WGC-HSBC Champions last Sunday made life uncomfortable for player and spectator alike on a humid day in Shanghai.

China's wealthiest had paid up to 3,500 yuan ($513) for their tickets but the best view, on the fourth green at least, went to the soldiers in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) barracks on the other side of the canal which runs alongside the hole.

As of 2007, a private in the PLA earned just 1,800 yuan ($264) a year but these guys got a close up of one of the key moments of the day, when Woods plunged his drive into the water and started a downturn in fortunes that ended his attempt to win a first title at the Sheshan International Golf Club.

Mickelson, who missed a putt of less than two feet to bogey the hole, subsequently recovered his nerve and went on to win the tournament for a second time, despite a late charge from Ernie Els.

The snap-happy followers of the leading group were a talking point all day and Woods exploded when a media photographer took pictures during the downswing of his drive at the sixth tee, which ended up in a bunker.

"Can't I even get a swing off?," he shouted. "Jesus Christ!"

Afterwards, though, he made no mention of the disruptions that had clearly upset him all week, preferring to blame his own shortcomings for his final round of par 72.

Picture of Tiger Woods and the PLA soldiers by REUTERS/Nir Elias and Phil Mickelson and the PLA soldiers by REUTERS/Aly Song.

Reuters photographer Aly Song caught Tommy Robredo making this gesture to the crowd during a third round defeat to compatriot Rafa Nadal at the Shanghai Masters on Thursday.

The Spaniard was upset at the noise the crowd, who overwhelmingly backed Nadal, were making during the match.

Robredo is not the first international sportsman to be unhappy at Chinese crowds not observing the etiquette of spectating at tennis and golf events.

It's not the most orginial of thoughts, but why should tennis players and golfers expect silence to do their jobs when other sportsmen are not afforded such conditions?

A rowdy, cheering crowd might even improve the atmosphere.  

Marat Safin and his sister Dinara Safina both made emotional departures from the China Open this week but for very different reasons.

Safin, 29, has decided to hang up his racket at the end end of the season after 12 years as a professional and organisers of the Beijing event held a special farewell ceremony for him after his entertaining defeat to Rafa Nadal in the quarter-finals.

Nadal had found himself in the unusual position of having fans cheering for his opponent as the Russian former world number one continued to reap the dividends of being the first China Open champion back in 2004.

Safin was clearly moved by the post-match ceremony, which included a video message from Safina, and if he said thank you to the Beijing fans once, he said it a thousand times. 

Safina, by contrast, left the centre court in tears on Monday after suffering the ignomony of the worst upset for a number one in the history of the rankings at the hands of 226th-ranked Chinese wild card Zhang Shuai.

The defeat, which followed early upsets at the U.S. Open and Pan Pacific Open in preceding tournaments, means Serena Williams will end the Russian's controversial 25-week reign as number one on Monday.

Marat, a former world number one and Australian Open champion, was asked to offer some advice to his sister and, although sympathetic, his reply reflected the hard-nosed attitude of a man coming to the end of 12 years of professional tennis.    

 "It’s a tough sport. It’s not a team sport; you can’t blame others on the team," he said. "It’s just you and how you can manage yourself along on tour and she is getting stronger and managed to get into first spot. It is already a big deal because no one expected her to be anywhere close, even in the top ten.

"She playing great at the moment, but she has ups and downs and hopefully she can recover from that and she will. Sometimes you have to deal with the difficulties and I think she has. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

"So, if she is positive in this small crisis, she will be a great player."

Photos by REUTERS/David Gray

Argentine Juan Martin del Potro has beaten Roger Federer to win in the U.S. Open and end the Swiss master's five-year domination of the title.

Does this mark the arrival of an exciting new 20-year-old talent or is it merely another reminder that Federer is no longer the force he once was? Or should we just enjoy another superb men's grand slam final?

Your thoughts please.

As mayor of Beijing for most of the period running up to the 2008 Olympics and now Vice Premier of China with responsibility for financial and economic affairs, Wang Qishan has been a very busy man over the last few years.

He has, however, made time to indulge his passion for tennis and been highly influential in the growth of the China Open tournament, now one of the top events in women’s tennis with ambitions of becoming an Asian major.

Wang also likes to take to the court, and who can blame him when he is offered the chance to trade forehands with some of the best women in the professional game?

“I know for a fact he’s played many of our (women) players behind closed doors, as have many members of the standing committee,” Beijing-based WTA President David Shoemaker revealed during an interview with Reuters this week.

“It’s often been boasted that that’s one of the rare opportunities outside of one of the standing committee meetings, where you get three or four of the members together.

“But when you get Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva and Serena Williams eager to have a hit with you, it can mobilise forces pretty quickly.”

Even as Vice Premier, Wang is not senior enough to take a place in the nine-strong Politburo Standing Committee, the highest decision-making body in China.  

PHOTO: Maria Sharapova in Beijing in 2005 by Jason Lee.

In Argentina, where footballing great Diego Maradona is worshipped in his own church, everyone is asking the same question: What will it take to get the ball rolling again?

Fans are angst-ridden over the delay of the season as bad management and the global slowdown leave the country's world-famous clubs unable to pay players and heavily in debt.

"It makes you mad," said Nicolas Luca, a Boca Juniors fan who toured the club's stadium last week. "Everyone's waiting to see if it starts. Soccer is more than a passion here."

Next to him, Juan Diaz, a 56-year-old Argentine living in Florida, snapped pictures of an empty green pitch. Then, he shoots the yellow and blue seating, trophies, club posters and even the locker room showers as a memento of his favorite club. 

"Not having soccer here is mad," Diaz said. "There are too many economic interests in this fight and they're hurting the Argentine people."

Clubs say fallout from the severe world economic downturn has forced them to sell players to European clubs for a fraction of what they received in years past.

Seven first division clubs have racked up some $184 million in debt, including about $80 million in taxes. Clubs owners and the AFA say the only solution is to more than double what they charge for television rights. On Wednesday, they cancelled the existing TV deal.

But to many fans here it comes down to putting an end to the perceived corruption of soccer bosses.

"There is an embezzlement of funds," Osvaldo Maciel, a taxi driver and River Plate fan said of his club. "They sold all the players and have had (rock) concerts all year (at the club's stadium). Where's the money now?"

The delay to the start of the season has angered fans, some of whom hurled stones and smashed windows at AFA's offices.

At Boca Juniors' La Bombanera stadiums, fans and shopkeepers are anxious for an end to the dispute. Businesses selling T-shirts and flags around the stadium are empty  except for an occasional tourist.

"Soccer cannot go untouched by the global crisis," said restaurant owner Carlos Zinola, 61, a lifetime Boca fan. "They're killing the game, people suffer all week and on Sunday, soccer gives them a way to escape their problems."

Picture of empty La Bombonera stadium by REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci.

If Inter Milan were intending their trip to Beijing for last week's Italian Super Cup to be a China charm offensive, coach Jose Mourinho was obviously not kept in the loop.

The accepted form for European club officials on pre-season trips to China is to politely praise everything local and talk up the footballing potential of the world's most populous nation.

After Saturday's 2-1 defeat to Lazio in the traditional Italian season curtain-raiser between the Serie A champions and Cup winners, Mourinho departed from the script.

The post-match news conference got off to a bad start when the local interpreter expressed his delight at Lazio's victory and invited Chinese media to ask Mourinho difficult questions.

Matters did not improve when Mourinho, who earlier in the week had described the Bird's Nest stadium -- China's pride and joy -- as "so-so", arrived on the podium.

The first question from state broadcaster CCTV, suggesting he had been forced into letting new signing Samuel Eto'o play a full 90 minutes, was answered politely.

The second, from a local newspaper reporter, asked why Lazio, playing on the same pitch and in the same searing heat that Mourinho had previously complained about, were able to win.

"After the first two questions, I know why Chinese football is so rubbish and why China has won gold medals in so many sports but not football, because the journalists are so unprofessional," the Portuguese replied.

Later, a reporter from state news agency Xinhua asked whether the match had further convinced Mourinho of the need to strengthen his midfield with a playmaker.

"After your questions it seems that my team played a horrible match," said the former Porto and Chelsea boss. "The conclusion is that you don't understand a thing, because all the questions are based on the result. This is not football. If we talk about the result, it was 2-1 to Lazio. If we are talking about the match, then we have to say one team played, the other was lucky. This is football."

Mourinho, who got his break in management after working as a interpreter for English coach Bobby Robson, was unsurprisingly lambasted by the Chinese sports media.

Web portal qq.com was typical, listing "Mourinho's seven sins in China".

"1. Losing the match, 2. Being arrogant, 3. Insulting journalists, 4. Sneering at Chinese football, 5. Despising the Bird's Nest, 6. Refusing to attend a charity dinner 7. Losing his temper at the Silk Market," it said.

Mourinho would not be the first tourist to lose his cool at the Silk Market, the central Beijing shopping centre famous for its faked goods where scores of shop assistants aggressively vie for custom, but he denied accusations of an eighth sin.

A statement posted on Inter's Chinese language website on Monday read: "Jose Mourinho today firmly denied the reports that he refused to meet China's coach Gao Hongbo.

"After Inter's training in the Olympic Sports Centre in the afternoon of Aug. 5, Gao met and talked to Mourinho ... The two coaches agreed to meet again the next day but because of the preparations for the Super Cup, they did not meet in the National Stadium."

The journalist who had asked the second question in the press conference was not impressed with Mourinho. "I don't think he's the special one," she told me as we left the stadium.

 Picture by David Gray

The "dark arts' of rugby's front row have long-suppposed to be a mystery for all bar the hulking props and hookers who face off in the "trenches" but it didn't take an expert to figure out something significant was happening in the first half of South Africa's defeat of the British and Irish Lions last weekend.

England World Cup winner and former captain Phil "Raging Bull" Vickery was taken apart by Springbok prop Tendai "The Beast" Mtawarira, a novice 10 years his junior and not previously noted for his scrummaging prowess.  

This is just not supposed to happen. Who or what was to blame? Vickery? Skulduggery? New Zealand referee Bryce Lawrence? The rest of the Lions pack?  

Below are a few explanations, and comments, from the British media:

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"The referee allowed The Beast to squat low and fire Vickery through the roof of the scrum, something that is totally illegal.”
Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times tries to make more friends in the Southern Hemisphere.

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"Vickery was not helped by the fact that yet another elite referee, Bryce Lawrence, of New Zealand, did not have a clue about what goes on in the front row and officiated accordingly. When Vickery was shot moon-wards, it was the clearest example of illegally lifting a player one could wish for, yet Lawrence saw only that Vickery stood up."

Brian Moore , the 1989 and 1993 British Lion and England hooker, agrees. 

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"He's a good man is Vickery and it's not time to bag him unduly now. He knows himself that he was well and truly ..."

Matt Cleary of the Daily Telegraph discreetly lets us finish his sentence for him. Was the word he was looking for foxed?

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"Eight scrums, three penalties, nine points. Those were the stark first-half stats reeled off by the scrum coach, Graham Rowntree, the morning after the terrible day before. It wasn't all Vickery's fault, the scrum being an area of collective responsibility, and no, there was nothing illegal about the Beast's work, despite what Ian McGeechan and Paul O'Connell had intimated in the immediate aftermath of the defeat.”

Eddie Butler, a number eight for Wales and the 1983 British Lions, sees no offence.

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"In the early scrums, Mtawarira went after his opponent, popping Vickery out of the engagement and leaving him peering around at nothing in particular like a human periscope. Vickery's response was to hit on the angle and drive in towards Bismarck du Plessis, the aggressive Springbok hooker – an act of purest self-preservation that was immediately spotted and heavily penalised by the referee, Bryce Lawrence.”

Chris Hewett - The Independent.

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"But in the end the tactic was simple; to target Vickery, who was seen as the weakest scrummager of the original three Lions tightheads by the South African camp ... The plan worked perfectly for the first half of the game. The Beast and huge hooker Bismarck du Plessis isolated and exploited the veteran England international ..."

Gareth Griffiths - South Wales Echo

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Finally, Vickery himself:  

"I had a couple of bad scrums and then the referee made his decisions, which were against me and never The Beast ... He (the ref) was very adamant but I never really worked out what he wanted."

PHOTO: England captain Phil Vickery wipes his face during their Six Nations rugby match against Scotland at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, Scotland in this March 8, 2008 David Moir/Reuters

Pittsburgh held a parade on Monday to celebrate the Penguins' Stanley Cup triumph along the same route that the Super Bowl trophy was carried in triumph by the NFL's Steelers in January.

It was the second time the city had claimed two of North America's four top team sport prizes -- the Superbowl, World Series, NBA championship and Stanley Cup -- in the same calendar year after 1979, when the Steelers were NFL champions and the Pirates won Major League Baseball's World Series.

The Steel City was re-dubbed "Champion City" after that double achievement 30 years ago and a quick skim through the winners of the four prizes since 1970 indicates that it is a pretty rare achievement.

Los Angeles did it in 1988 when the Lakers took the NBA title and the Dodgers won the World Series and if we give the New England Patriots to Boston, which only seems fair, Beantown also doubled up when the Pats won the Super Bowl and Red Sox were baseball's champions in 2004.

The Lakers's NBA triumph on Sunday might not be it for LA this year, however. The one remaining prize up for grabs is the World Series and, although there are a lot of games to play, the Dodgers have the best record in the major leagues at the moment.

Any other nominations for the champion of Champion Cities?

Picture of Penguin fans celebrating in Pittsburgh on Friday (top) by Jason Cohn, Lakers fans make merry outside Staples Center on Sunday by Mario Anzuoni

Kobe Bryant had 30 points to lead the LA Lakers to a 99-86 Game Five win over the Orlando Magic on Sunday and a 15th NBA title.

Kobe relinquished the league's Most Valuable Player award to Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers this year. Does his fourth championship ring prove he has in fact been a more valuable player this season or just that he has better players around him?

In any case, 11-times All Star Bryant did claim one of the few awards he had not previously won, the Finals MVP award.

Picture by Jeff Haynes