Singh takes lead

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Without the world’s No. 1 player around, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson brought some star power Friday to the final World Golf Championship of the year.

Singh twice escaped from the trees on his closing holes at Firestone and renewed his affair with a belly putter on his way to a 4-under 66 at the Bridgestone Invitational, putting his name atop the leaderboard for the first time in more than four months.

He was one shot ahead of Mickelson, who made another great escape at the end of the second round, this time holing a 20-foot par putt to finish off a 66 that put him in the final group with Singh.

Women’s British Open

SUNNINGDALE, England — Yuri Fudoh of Japan and Ji-Yai Shin of South Korea shot 4-under 68s to lead by one stroke and equal the halfway record, while Annika Sorenstam’s 72 just made the cut.

Reno-Tahoe Open

RENO, Nev. — Michelle Wie failed in her eighth attempt to make the cut on the PGA Tour, shooting a second-round 80 at the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open. Parker McLachlin tied the course record with a 62 to take a four-stroke lead over 1987 Masters winner Larry Mize and three others.

Wie shot a 1-over 73 Thursday as she attempted to become the first woman since World War II to make the cut on the PGA Tour. But a quintuple-bogey 9 Friday helped push her to 9-over 153 at the par-72 Montreux Golf & Country Club.

“I feel my game is a lot better. Obviously the score doesn’t show it, but I know what I need to work on,” Wie said. “I gave it my best today and I felt like I did a lot of good things and hopefully that outshines the ones I made mistakes on.”

The 18-year-old, who was making her first PGA appearance since January 2007, had two bogeys and one birdie through her first nine holes and was within striking distance of the even-par cut line at the 7,472-yard mountain course.

But she had a double bogey on her 13th hole of the day after she hit her second shot over the green into heavy rough on the 518-yard, par-5 No. 4. The quintuple-bogey 9 came four holes later on the 464-yard, par-4 eighth, when she had to take two penalty strokes.

U.S. Senior Open

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Difficult pin placements and faster, drier greens flustered the field and only five golfers managed to shoot below par, including Fred Funk, whose 1-under 69 gave him the lead at the halfway point of the U.S. Senior Open.

Funk’s two-day score of 6-under 134 is two shots ahead of Eduardo Romero (69) and four ahead of Mark McNulty (70), Tom Kite (71) and John Cook (72).

Stealing the show, however, was a black bear that ambled out of the mountains in the morning and crossed the 13th fairway before checking out spectators outside the ropes.

Nobody was harmed, and neither was the bear.

“(Jack) Nicklaus isn’t here, so I guess that’s a substitute,” cracked Funk.

Although tournament officials were prepared to tranquilize the animal and stop play were it to become aggressive or spooked, after several minutes the bear crawled through a drainage pipe on the ninth hole that leads to the West Course, then went through another drainage pipe and into the wilderness, leaving unnerved galleries and golfers behind.

Tags: golf, pga, lpga, singh, mickelson