Sports Digest

A round-up of today's other sports news in brief...

Pierse surrenders title as Simson takes the honours 

GOLF: ARTHUR PIERSE tamely surrendered his British Open Seniors Amateur title at Royal Cinque Ports on the Kent coast yesterday.

The Tipperary legend, a member of the 1983 Walker Cup side which narrowly lost to the Americans, plunged down the leaderboard when he slumped to an unhappy 83 in a round in which little went right.

That gave him a 54-hole aggregate of 231 and put him in joint 23rd position, some 15 strokes off the pace.

The surprising fact is Canadian Graham Cooke, who lost to Pierse in a play-off at Nairn last year, did not hold onto his overnight lead.

In the end Paul Simson, with an aggregate of 216, became the eighth American in 10 years to clinch the title - he was two strokes in front of Kent's Chris Reynolds.

The leading Irishman was Portmarnock's Adrian Morrow who finished with an excellent 73 for a total of 223.one ahead of Barry Reddan from County Louth.

LEADING FINAL TOTALS WITH THIRD ROUND SCORES:

216 P Simson (USA) 70;

218 C Reynolds (Littlestone) 69;

220 G Cooke (Canada) 77;

221 J Blumenfield (USA) 76, R Woulfe (USA) 77.

Irish totals:

223 A Morrow (Portmarnock) 73

224 B Reddan (County Louth);75

225 M Kelly (Killeen)76 ;

228 T Hayes (The K Club)73;

229 V Smyth (County Louth)76;

231 A Pierse (Tipperary) 83;

233 M Morris (Portmarnock)78;

234 L McNamara (Woodbrook)78, N Duke (Killiney) 81.

Rowntree joins Johnson's team

RUGBY: ENGLAND MANAGER Martin Johnson has promoted Graham Rowntree to the senior coaching team.

Former England and Leicester prop Rowntree will now work alongside John Wells as well as Mike Ford and Brian Smith having spent the last year working with the national academy set-up.

Johnson said: "Graham is an excellent coach and his knowledge of scrummaging is first rate.

"I enjoyed playing alongside him during our time at Leicester Tigers and I look forward to working with Graham as a member of the coaching team."

England's elite rugby director Rob Andrew said: "Graham's appointment underlines one of the Elite Rugby Department's objectives of providing opportunities for our coaches from within our own elite coaching programmes and structure.

"I'm delighted Graham has made such rapid progress."

Niland ousts the top seed

TENNIS: CONOR NILAND yesterday took the biggest scalp of his career, in the quarter-finals of the ATP Challenger event in New Delhi.

The unseeded Irish player, ranked 317 in the world, dumped out the top seed and 171-ranked Danai Udomchoke, of Thailand, on a 6-1 5-7 6-3 scoreline.

Udomchoke, his country's number one, was as 77 in the world rankings in January 2007.

Calzaghe's November Garden date

BOXING: JOE CALZAGHE'S postponed showdown with Roy Jones Jr has been rescheduled for November 8th and will take place at New York's Madison Square Garden.

A wrist injury suffered by the unbeaten Welsh two-weight world champion forced the original September 20th date to be put back.

The fight, originally billed as 36-year-old Calzaghe's "farewell" bout, will now go ahead less than two months later than scheduled and will be shown on American pay-TV network HBO and Setanta.

Calzaghe said: "I can't wait to get back to America and triumph over another boxing legend."

Jones (52-4, 38KOs), said: "I'm just glad to be blessed with the opportunity to be God's instrument that he plays his beautiful music through and I just can't wait for November 8th."