Enquirer wire services

WILMINGTON, Del. - Annika Sorenstam ran into familiar foes Thursday in the LPGA Championship - a punishing DuPont Country Club and Wendy Ward.

All that mattered was the golf course, and Sorenstam had few complaints.

Her 1-under 70 left her three strokes behind Hee-Won Han and two behind Ward, her nemesis from the Solheim Cup.

Sorenstam is in a good frame of mind as she tries to capture the one major championship that has given her fits the last five years.

"That's the best start I've had at this championship in a while," Sorenstam said. "I'm just a slow starter."

On a windy day, only six players broke 70.

• PGA Tour golfer John Riegger said Thursday he has backing for a $1 million one-on-one challenge against Sorenstam.

"We'll have the cash on the tee if she wants to play," Riegger said after the first round of the Capital Open.

Two weeks ago, Sorenstam became the first woman in 58 years to play a PGA Tour event.

"She made a statement ... that if she played 30 events on the tour she could finish the top 100 on the money list," Riegger said.

"... This is my seventh year on the tour. I've never finished in the top 125."

Riegger said the challenge would be stroke play over 18 holes with both players using the same tees.

He said Sorenstam could choose the time and place.

Riegger said he was unsure if his intermediaries had contacted Sorenstam.

SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP: Bobby Wadkins, Mike San Filippo and John Jacobs each shot 2-under-par 68 to share the lead after the first round.

Seven other players, including defending champion Fuzzy Zoeller, were a stroke back in the first of five major championships on the Champions Tour season.

PGA CAPITAL OPEN: Robert Gamez and Rich Beem hit stride at the Capital Open.

On a sunny but soggy morning in Potomac, Md., that produced erratic rounds across the board, Gamez rolled out of bed late and shot a 5-under-par 66 to take a one-shot lead over Beem and Notah Begay in Thursday's first round of the final tuneup before the U.S. Open.

Seven players, including former British Open champion Paul Lawrie, were two shots back at 68.

Colleges

GEORGIA: Athletic director Vince Dooley will lose his job next year after university president Michael Adams said Thursday he had rejected Dooley's request for a contract extension.

Adams, who has feuded with Dooley often since coming to the school in 1997, insisted they stick to a deal reached in 2001 that will end Dooley's 25-year reign June 30, 2004.

Adams said the 70-year-old Dooley could stay on for a year as a fund-raising consultant, with no change in his $300,000 salary.

Dooley and Adams publicly disagreed over the firing of football coach Jim Donnan in 2000. A year earlier, they were at odds over the selection of Jim Harrick as basketball coach.

Adams overruled Dooley, and Harrick led Georgia to the most successful three-year stretch in its history. But this season a former player made accusations of payoffs and academic fraud under Harrick and his son, assistant coach Jim Harrick Jr. Both were forced out.

Arenafootball2

SWARM: The Swarm get another crack at the Midwest Division-leading Quad City Steamwheelers on Saturday in Moline, Ill. Last week, the Wheelers beat the Swarm 48-21 to extend their Midwest lead to four games. The Swarm will try to break a four-game losing streak.

Game time Saturday is 8:30 p.m.