Sports
Behind Kershaw, L.A. rights ship vs. rival Padres
LOS ANGELES — His teammates were reeling, their bitter rivals were surging, the division was slipping, and under those circumstances, Clayton Kershaw — clearly diminished but still every bit as determined — came through.
With the Los Angeles Dodgers riding a four-game losing streak, and hosting a San Diego Padres team that had won five straight to make up 10 games in a span of six weeks, Kershaw fired six innings of one-run ball Friday night, cutting through the tension of a keyed-up series to set the tone in a 3-2 victory at Dodger Stadium.
The National League West, a division the Dodgers led by nine games just six weeks earlier, is tied once more. The Padres and Dodgers will play five more games against one another over the next nine days.
“We had the right guy on the mound tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think we all know that.”
Kershaw made his debut with the Dodgers’ 2025 rotation around the middle of May, after fully recovering from offseason knee and foot surgeries, and helped stabilize a group that once again found itself beset by injuries. His initial results were merely decent — a 3.62 ERA in 12 starts, with 39 strikeouts and 18 walks in 59⅔ innings — but his availability was vital.
Over the past few weeks, as the Dodgers’ rotation has stabilized, Kershaw has tapped into another level.
All three of his starts this month have seen him go six innings while combining to allow just two runs. On Friday night, the only damage against him was a Ramon Laureano solo homer that clanged off the left-field foul pole. Kershaw featured a sharper-than-usual slider and allowed just two other baserunners while requiring only 76 pitches to complete 18 outs. Fifteen starts into his age-37 season, he’s 7-2 with a 3.01 ERA.
“It’s just what you’re supposed to do,” Kershaw said of being at his best lately. “As a starter, you’re supposed to pitch well. And when it’s your turn, step up. And our rotation is getting healthier. We got a lot of guys that can throw the ball really well, so I just want to do my part.”
Friday began with the news that Max Muncy, the Dodgers’ everyday third baseman and a critical middle-of-the-order bat, was nursing an oblique strain that would keep him out for the next several weeks. Muncy joined Tommy Edman, Enrique Hernandez and Hyeseong Kim on the injured list, prompting a rookie (Alex Freeland) and a journeyman (Buddy Kennedy) to fill in. The bullpen, meanwhile, was already down as many as six high-leverage relievers, severely limiting Roberts’ options to hold leads late.
The Dodgers desperately needed Kershaw’s six innings. But they also needed the contributions from Teoscar Hernandez, who was carrying an 0.673 OPS since the start of July but provided a critical insurance run with a seventh-inning homer. And they badly needed the production from their bullpen, where five relievers combined to allow just one run over the last three innings.
With Roberts unwilling to bring Kershaw back out for another inning, Ben Casparius successfully tackled the middle of the Padres’ lineup in the top of the seventh. The Padres then threatened in the eighth against Alex Vesia, loading the bases on a couple of hit by pitches and a walk, then cutting their deficit to one on Luis Arraez‘s sac fly. With two on, two outs and Manny Machado due up, Roberts turned to his best weapon, Blake Treinen, and watched him induce an inning-ending popout on one pitch.
Alexis Diaz, the former All-Star closer discarded by the Cincinnati Reds, and Jack Dreyer, the rookie left-hander who has been a godsend this season, closed it out in the ninth.
“It was a high-intensity game,” Roberts said. “It was certainly kind of tempered as far as internally, but I think that I could see it as far as on the field. I could feel it. Our focus was keen. They pitched really well. I thought we pitched really well. It was just a well-played ballgame.”
The last time the Dodgers and Padres faced off, it was the middle of June, amid a stretch in which they played seven games in 11 days against one another — on the heels of a tense NL Division Series the previous October. The Dodgers won five of those games, including three of four at Dodger Stadium. The four-game set in L.A. featured eight hit by pitches, half of which were dispersed to Fernando Tatis Jr. and Shohei Ohtani. The finale saw Roberts shove Padres manager Mike Shildt while both dugouts and bullpens emptied.
At that point, the Dodgers were five games better than the Padres and seemed poised to cruise to a 12th division title in 13 years. The next two weeks only fortified that belief. Then the Dodgers navigated through one of their driest spells in years, losing 22 of 31 games after July 3 — including all three from Angel Stadium earlier this week. The bullpen was a mess, the offense was inconsistent, and the Padres, buoyed by a string of trade-deadline acquisitions from their aggressive general manager, were riding a high.
For one night, at least, Kershaw and his teammates put a stop to that.
“It just takes one to get going,” Kershaw said. “Hopefully this was it tonight for us.”
Sports
AFCON final in pictures – iShowSpeed, bloody heads, penalty fury, fan chaos, spectacular saves, and a goal
The Africa Cup of Nations final in Rabat on Sunday night was a fairly normal football match, for most of the first 89 minutes… and then it descended into utter madness as a penalty call (soft but right) had a domino effect across the stadium.
With celebrities and dignitaries in attendance, Morocco and Senegal played brilliant, defensively strong, attacking football. A showcase for the African game. And then a penalty call was made.
In the end, Senegal won 1-0 thanks to a Pape Gueye strike in extra time, leaving Morocco fans heartbroken in the stands.
Gonzaga forward Braden Huff will miss four to eight weeks because of a left knee injury, a school spokesperson told ESPN on Thursday.
Huff suffered the injury in practice earlier this week. The varied timeline means Huff could return well before the end of the regular season or be out until the NCAA tournament.
A 6-foot-10 junior, Huff has been a breakout star for Gonzaga this season, averaging 17.8 points and 5.6 rebounds while shooting better than 66% from the field. He has hit the 20-point mark on eight occasions, including a five-game stretch in December in which he averaged 24.4 points and 5.4 rebounds. The highlight of that stretch was a 37-point performance against Campbell.
Huff is tied with Graham Ike as Gonzaga’s leading scorer and is second in rebounding.
With Huff out, Mark Few could opt for a smaller lineup and start Tyon Grant-Foster in the frontcourt alongside Ike or give seldom-used 7-footer Ismaila Diagne more minutes off the bench.
No. 9 Gonzaga (17-1, 5-0 WCC) plays at Washington State on Thursday.
MELBOURNE, Australia — It took 45 years to be in a position to set a record that has drawn so much attention. So another 14½ minutes serving to keep her Australian Open hopes alive felt like no time at all for Venus Williams.
Ranked No. 576 and playing on a wild-card entry, the seven-time major winner led 4-0 in the third set Sunday before Olga Danilovic rallied to win six straight games — getting the vital break in the extra-long, next-to-last game — for a 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 victory.
“It was an amazing journey on the court today,” said Williams, who left the stadium with a smile and a wave.
Just by starting the first-round match, Williams became the oldest woman to compete in an Australian Open singles main draw, surpassing the mark set by Japan’s Kimiko Date, who was 44 when she lost in the first round in 2015.
“I’m really proud of my effort today because I’m playing better with each match, getting to the places that I want to get to,” Williams said. “Right now, I’m just going to have to keep going forward and working on myself and working to control my errors.
“Those are things, too, that come with playing extra matches … all of those things that I’m still learning. It’s kind of weird, but it’s super exciting to have played that well and to get myself in that position and come very close.”
Williams was 17 when she made her Australian Open debut in 1998, reaching the quarterfinals. This was her 22nd trip to Melbourne Park, where she lost finals to her sister, Serena, in 2003 and 2017.
She was married in December to Andrea Preti, and the couple traveled together in Melbourne.
Williams was determined not just to break Date’s age record. She wanted to punctuate the occasion with a win that could have set up another match against Coco Gauff.
After splitting the first two sets, Williams went on a roll and dropped just five points across four games, hitting some vintage winners. Then No. 68-ranked Danilovic found range with her big left-handed forehand returns and put Williams back under pressure.
“I told myself before the match I really want to take this moment — playing against Venus Williams is something I can’t take for granted,” Danilovic said. “At 4-0, I said ‘just play.’
“It was such a pleasure playing against such a legend.”
At 4-4 in the deciding set, Williams served for 14 minutes, 28 seconds, saving two break points and setting up game points of her own with powerful winners and clutch aces, before she finally succumbed.
“It was such a great game, such a great moment. The energy from the crowd was amazing. That lifted me up so much,” Williams said of that penultimate game on her serve. “She played a great game. Also, some luck there as well. That’s just the sport. That’s how it works sometimes. But it was an amazing moment.”
Danilovic calmly served out, clinching it in 2 hours, 17 minutes when a Williams forehand clipped the net and landed just wide of the line on match point.
Williams entered the Australian Open on a five-match losing streak since the first and only win in her comeback at Washington last year. She also lost in the first round at the US Open in August.
“At 4-love I felt good. Also, it’s the biggest lead I’ve had since I’ve been back,” Williams said. “In a lot of ways I’m having to relearn how to do things again, if that makes any sense.”
She will keep that process going in the doubles at Melbourne Park then will think about her schedule for the rest of 2026.
“Right now I’m very much in the tournament,” she said. “My next focus is the doubles. So that’s where my head is.”
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