Shiffrin back from injury, 10th in race

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FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2013, file photo, former Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt smiles as a banner is raised in her honor before the team’s NCAA college basketball game against Notre Dame in Knoxville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne, File)

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United States’ Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates her third place in a alpine ski, women’s World Cup giant slalom, in Killington, Vt., Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

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FILE - PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan speaks during a news conference before the Travelers Championship golf tournament at TPC River Highlands, June 22, 2022, in Cromwell, Conn. Monahan is returning to work just over a month after he stepped away for a “medical situation” during a tumultuous time of working out a surprise commercial agreement with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

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Shiffrin back from injury, 10th in race

Mikaela Shiffrin finished 10th in a World Cup slalom race on her injury comeback on Thursday, with Croatian racer Zrinka Ljutic winning in style under floodlights in Courchevel, France. The 21-year-old Ljutic was 1.26 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Sara Hector and 1.28 clear of Germany’s Lena Duerr. Shiffrin was 2.04 seconds adrift. Chasing a record-extending 100th World Cup win, the 29-year-old American was fifth after the first run on the Stade Emile Allais course but struggled with her timing on both runs. “I didn’t come into this race expecting that I was going to win,” said Shiffrin, who crashed on Nov. 30 in a giant slalom in Killington, Vermont. A couple of weeks later, the two-time Olympic gold medalist had abdominal surgery to clean out a puncture wound. Shiffrin said before this race that she was prioritizing her recovery ahead of chasing the magic 100. “It was a very important step in my recovery to see how I’m stacking up with the top skiers in the world,” Shiffrin said. The world championships are next month in Austria.

Nashville bidding for WNBA team

The chairman of the NHL’s Predators and his wife want to bring the WNBA to Nashville and have teamed up with a star-filled investor group including Candace Parker, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning and entertainers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. The group led by Bill Haslam, a former Tennessee governor, submitted its bid to the WNBA on Thursday for a franchise that would start playing in 2028. The team also would be named the Tennessee Summitt in honor of the late Pat Summitt. The Nashville bid also features a plan to build a practice facility for the WNBA team that also would be used for youth basketball. Parker said in a statement “Tennessee is the DNA of everything women’s basketball stands for.” The three-time WNBA champ won two national titles at Tennessee with Summitt. “If you know me, you know how important and impactful Coach Summitt IS on my life,” Parker wrote on Instagram. Summitt, above, a Tennessee native who coached the Lady Vols to eight national titles, died in 2016, four years after retiring following her dementia diagnosis.

PGA Tour ponders use of shot clock

The PGA Tour is taking a hard look at whether to allow rangefinders and publicize violations as part of a comprehensive study on pace of play and other enhancements to the game that have come out of a survey of 50,000 golf fans. Tour officials were purposely short on specifics Wednesday during a meeting with reporters on the “Fan Forward” initiative that Commissioner Jay Monahan, above, announced a year ago. He’s expected to go into greater detail at The Players Championship in March. But the preview session at Pebble Beach supported Monahan’s message late last year that “everything is on the table” as the PGA Tour embarks on a series of changes. “I think as we roll the clock forward three, five, 10 years, we’re going to look back at 2025 as an inflection point in the evolution of the tour,” said Andy Weitz, the tour’s chief marketing and communications officer. A shot clock has been mentioned to help improve pace of play on tour, and the topic has gained momentum in recent weeks when the final round of threesomes has taken about 5 1/2 hours to finish. —Associated Press