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BELLEAIR, Fla. (AP) — Nelly Korda holed two long birdie putts to start her recovery from a six-shot deficit to Charley Hull, cutting the lead down to one shot Saturday going into the final round of The Annika.

Hull kept the lead by limiting the damage to a bogey on the 18th hole at the Pelican Golf Club after hitting into the water following a lengthy wait that led them to finish in near darkness. That gave her a 2-under 68.

Korda was poised to tie for the lead when she hit the tricky 18th green about 30 feet away. Her birdie putt down the slope and with the grain toward the water still ran out 4 feet, and she missed the par putt and shot 67.

Both are among the quickest players on the LPGA. Neither was happy about how it ended.

“It’s kind of hard when you don’t really see. I think it was a little bit of poor planning by starting so late for us,” Korda said. “Whenever you’re sitting on 18 and the sun is already down, I mean, it’s never nice. And especially with how slick these greens are and you can’t properly see, I mean, obviously two factors that go into that, too.

“At the end of the day I’m the one that missed it.”

Hull was at 12-under 198, one shot clear of Korda and Zhang Weiwei, who finished much earlier with a 62. Zhang is No. 106 in the Race to CME Globe and needs to finish in the top 100 to keep a full LPGA card for next year.

Savannah Grewal of Mississauga, Ont., shot a 66 to get to 3-under. Hamilton’s Alena Sharp at 2-under turned in a 73.

The weekend looked to be a duel between Korda, the No. 1 player in women’s golf and the LPGA player of the year, and the carefree Hull. That’s how it looks for the final round, though it certainly didn’t start out that way.

Korda, who began Saturday two shots behind, had a pair of bogeys in her opening four holes and failed to birdie the par-5 seventh. Hull had two birdies to stretch her lead over Korda to six shots, and Hull had a four-shot lead at one point.

Korda holed a super slick, 45-foot birdie putt on the eighth hole, and followed that with another smooth stroke to make birdie from about 35 feet on No. 9.

The American star kept inching closer, hitting her approach to 2 feet on the 11th and making a 10-foot birdie putt on the 16th. Korda hit wedge to 4 feet on the 17th, and Hull answered with a wedge to 3 feet for matching birdies.

They also matched bogeys at the end in near darkness because of the pace and the time it took to cope with the fast greens and in some cases to get rulings.

Hull came up short and it rolled down the bank into the water. She chipped about 6 feet by and made the bogey putt, only for Korda to three-putt for bogey.

“My putt, I could barely see the hole,” Hull said. “I couldn’t see the break or anything. So it was pretty dark to finish in.”

Alexa Pano, playing in the final group, never recovered from three straight bogeys early and shot a 72 that not only moved her seven shots behind, it knocked her out of the top 60 in the Race to CME Globe.

The top 60 after this week advance to the CME Group Tour Championship, where the winner of the season finale gets a $4 million prize.

The top 60 and top 100 are the key numbers at the penultimate tournament. Zhang most likely can’t move into the top 60 with a win, but keeping her card is key. She had nine birdies and will be in the final group with Korda and Hull.

“Just felt it’s an amazing day,” Zhang said.

Olivia Cowan of Germany had a 65 and was in sixth place, four shots behind. She is No. 116 in points list and needs to hold her position to narrowly keep her card.

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AP golf:

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Bela Karolyi, the charismatic if polarizing gymnastics coach who turned young women into champions and the United States into an international power, has died. He was 82.

USA Gymnastics said Karolyi died Friday. No cause of death was given.

Karolyi and wife Martha trained multiple Olympic gold medalists and world champions in the U.S. and Romania, including Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.

“A big impact and influence on my life,” Comaneci, who was just 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.

The Karolyis defected to the United States in 1981 and over the next 30-plus years became a guiding force in American gymnastics, though not without controversy. Bela helped guide Retton — all of 16 — to the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the floor at the 1996 Games in Atlanta after Strug’s vault secured the team gold for the Americans.

Karolyi briefly became the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics women’s elite program in 1999 and incorporated a semi-centralized system that eventually turned the Americans into the sport’s gold standard. It did not come without a cost. He was pushed out after the 2000 Olympics after several athletes spoke out about his tactics.

It would not be the last time Karolyi was accused of grandstanding and pushing his athletes too far physically and mentally.

During the height of the Larry Nassar scandal in the late 2010s — when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor was effectively given a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment — over a dozen former gymnasts came forward saying the Karolyis were part of a system that created an oppressive culture that allowed Nassar’s behavior to run unchecked for years.

Still, some of Karolyi’s most famous students were always among his staunchest defenders. When Strug got married, she and Karolyi took a photo recreating their famous scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her onto the medals podium after she vaulted on a badly sprained ankle.

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AP sports:

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PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is attending the UFC heavyweight championship clash at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, combining two things close to his heart: fierce battles inside the octagon and New York City.

After a year delay, Stipe Miocic is getting his shot at a third heavyweight championship reign when he battles current champion Jon Jones at UFC 309.

Trump is a longtime UFC enthusiast and frequent attendee of major fights. He made promoting hypermasculine tones a signature of his latest, successful campaign for the White House — as he looked to further widen the gap among male voters between himself and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump and his top supporters embraced alpha-male terms and often accentuated them with vulgar and demeaning language.

While campaigning, Trump appeared frequently on podcasts, gaming platforms, and with key supporters who described a vote for Trump as a way to demonstrate true manliness. Trump also spent three hours taping a podcast with Joe Rogan, who himself has spoken about hypermasculinity. Harris failed to do a similar appearance with Rogan, citing scheduling conflicts.

A return to Madison Square Garden means revisiting the place where a comedian caused an uproar at a Trump rally last month by likening Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage.” Yet Trump continues to relish visits to New York, where he lived for decades, before moving to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump boarded his plane for the flight to New York accompanied by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services after his new administration begins on Jan. 20.

Except for a day trip to Washington this week to meet for nearly two hours with President Joe Biden, and separately address House Republicans, Trump has been spending his time since his Election Day victory at Mar-a-Lago. The club has hosted galas and conservative events throughout the week.

Trump has been close to UFC President Dana White for more than two decades.

White hosted a 2001 UFC battle at Trump Taj Mahal, a former casino-hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Trump has frequently attended UFC matches since – including during his 2024 campaign. Trump has turned up at fights recently with famous entourages, including White, musician Kid Rock and former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term, he and White starred in a UFC video where the then-president was called the “Combatant In Chief.”

As Trump has strengthened his grip on the national Republican Party over the last near-decade, White’s personal political profile has grown exponentially. White spoke at the 2016 and 2020 Republican conventions, and when the party gathered in Milwaukee this past July. He also addressed the crowd at Trump’s Florida victory party in the wee hours of the morning after Election Day.

“This is what happens when the machine comes after you,” White said then. “What you’ve seen over the last several years, this is what it looks like: couldn’t stop him. He keeps going forward. He doesn’t quit.”

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