MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Rookie Shawn Stefani has been through enough scrambling around the mini-tours trying to make it to the PGA Tour that a quadruple bogey wasnt going to shake his confidence or his concentration. Even if it cost him the lead. Stefani overcame the bad hole that dropped him down Saturday and shot a 4-under 66 to take the third-round lead in the St. Jude Classic. "I feel like I hit one bad shot on 11, and that was the putt that I missed for a triple," Stefani said showing off his sense of humour. "I know that sounds crazy, but you know I hit the club that I wanted to hit. Unfortunately, was the wrong club at the wrong time." The 31-year-old Texan rebounded with four birdies over his final five holes to move back atop the leaderboard. He finished with eight birdies to go with that quadruple bogey to reach 12-under 198 at TPC Southwind. "Its who gets over it fastest and who moves on the fastest," Stefani said. "And to finish the way I did with three birdies on the last three was great. But I was just out there just playing the game and having fun. Thats what Im here for is to play the best I can and have fun with it, and I did that today." Harris English was a stroke back after a 69, finishing out of the lead for the first time this week. He sounded happy it wasnt worse after playing with Stefani. "Shawn played so good on the front side, he birdied 10 I thought this guys going to shoot 60," English said. Thirteen players shot at least 4 under on a day with easier pins on the small, firm greens and very little wind. Scott Stallings, Patrick Reed and Nicholas Thompson were 8 under. Stallings had a 67, Reed shot 64, and Thompson had a 66. Phil Mickelson was another stroke back after a 65 with his best round yet after not playing the previous three weeks. His day could have been even better if not for three bogeys along with six birdies and an eagle. Mickelson said he needs to be a little bit sharper with each swing. "There were a couple of tee shots that didnt catch the fairway," he said. "Ive got to get that ball in the fairway. And I did a better job of it today and consequently I was able to make a lot of birdies because I could be aggressive from there. I also just have to miss it in the proper spot too." Pins will be in tougher locations Sunday, and Mickelson said any wind could create the potential for the leaders to shoot over par. Only Stallings has won on tour among the players ahead of Mickelson, who has 41 career wins with four majors as he tunes up his game for the U.S. Open next week at Merion. "I feel like Im playing well enough where I can go out and shoot a low round tomorrow," Mickelson said. "I expect the course to play different tomorrow than it did today. Today was set up for moving day. The tees were up, the pins were in easy spots, no wind. ... Im looking forward to tomorrows final round." This is just the 17th career tour event for Stefani, who earned his way onto the PGA Tour by finishing sixth on the Web.com Tour money list in 2012 in a two-time win season. He played the U.S. Open in 2009 at Bethpage, missing the cut. In March, he had the lead after the first and second rounds at the Tampa Bay Championship before tying for seventh in his best finish yet. "Im much more prepared with my game than I was then, and Im feeling a lot more comfortable with it," Stefani said. "Its been a tough year for me. Ive stayed patient with it and tried to keep going and focusing on all the things I usually do. But its tough." Stefani went off in the final group with English, who had a share of the lead after 18 and had the lead to himself after 36 holes. English opened strong with two birdies in his first three holes to become the first to get to 12 under here this week. But the 23-year-old English bogeyed Nos. 5 and 8 with his playing partner getting his third birdie on No. 9 to take the lead to himself. Stefani hit his approach on the par 4 to 7 feet to set up the birdie, helping him make the turn at 11 under. He then birdied No. 10 rolling in a 12-footer to go to 12 under with a two-stroke lead over English. Then the rookie ran into trouble on the island green of the par-3 No. 11. Stefani went with a wedge and said a gust of wind caught it in the air, sending it into the water short of the island green. He took his drop and then hit into the back bunker where he had a buried lie. He got the ball out but didnt clear the slope, so the ball rolled back into the bunker. He pushed an 8-footer past the hole 4 feet before finally salvaging a quadruple bogey. But Stefani birdied No. 14 and got a big par save on No. 15 after his tee shot rolled into the water near the green. He took a drop, then chipped in from 49 feet to avoid dropping another stroke and stay within a shot of English with a big smile of relief. Stefani finished with a 3-footer for birdie on No. 16, a 17-footer for birdie on No. 17 and capped his round with an 8-footer on No. 18 just after English made a 14-footer to move back into the lead for a few moments English had plenty of luck himself. On the par-4 12th, his approach to the green went left and bounced off the top of a grandstand and hit off a woman before rolling into a greenside bunker. English saved par by hitting his shot within a foot of the hole to stay at 10 under. Notes: Eric Meierdierks aced the 167-yard eighth with an 8-iron. ... Only Dustin Johnson (2012), Lee Westwood (2010) and Dicky Pride (1994) have won this event in their first start here since the tournament moved to TPC Southwind in 1989. ... This year, the third-round leader has won 11 of the 21 stroke-play events on tour. Cheap Lebrons From China . Meanwhile, there were huge victories for Sunderland and West Ham over fellow relegation rivals, leaving the battle to avoid the drop up for grabs with the bottom 11 teams separated by just six points. Eden Hazard and Fernando Torres scored second-half goals to seal a fourth straight victory for Chelsea, which climbed above Arsenal and Manchester City in the standings ahead of their games on Monday and Sunday respectively. Lebron James Shoes Clearance . James, who turned 29 on Monday, injured his groin Friday during the Heats overtime loss at Sacramento. He sat out the following game, a 108-107 win Saturday in Portland, before coming back to help send the Nuggets to their seventh consecutive loss. http://www.wholesalelebron.com/ . The Cleveland Indians, Tampa Bay Rays, and Texas Rangers all won on Sunday meaning the Rangers will host the Rays in a play-in game on Monday. Cheap Lebron James Shoes . Then the Pacers gave Oladipo and his Orlando teammates the cold shoulder. Paul Georges buzzer-beating 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter spurred a 21-4 run, finally sending Indiana past the Magic 97-87 in a tougher-than-expected opening night matchup. Wholesale Lebron Shoes . Walcott is available for Saturdays home match against Southampton as Arsenal looks to extend its two-point lead at the top of the Premier League. The Gunners are currently the second highest scorers in the league but Wenger insists Walcott will add something extra to his team. There was little to suggest, through the week, at the Karnataka State Billiards Association (KSBA) in central Bengaluru that a World Championship was underway. Despite some of the games best players in the house, the playing hall was largely empty and quiet; except for the final, which was packed, there were fewer than a dozen spectators - and half of those were invariably players families.The answer possibly lies with the sport in question - Billiards.At a time when sport is being tweaked to fit capsule-sized formats, and keeping in mind decreasing audience attention spans, billiards sticks to tradition: Players dressed in waistcoat and bowtie, matches sometimes lasting seven hours long. Billiards evolved from a lawn game similar to croquet played in the 15th century, and doesnt seem to have changed much since then.Its younger cousin, snooker, ticks the right boxes. Its faster, uses more balls (15 as opposed to the three of billiards) and generally enjoys a wider profile across the globe. In Myanmar, for example, snooker is the growing sport; billiards languishes in obscurity. Youngsters in Myanmar take to snooker a lot more than they do to billiards, Myanmars highest-ranked billiards player Aung Htay told ESPN at the World Championships. Billiards is viewed as old fashioned.It seems almost everyone in the game agrees with that, but nothing has been done about it. The rules of the sport have to be tweaked, says reigning national billiards champion and this years World Championship silver medallist Sourav Kothari. Billiards is getting monotonous, especially the long format. You have to jazz it up, bring more noise into the sport. The absence of a marketable star with a magnetic personality - someone who would venture beyond the staid and predictable, and maybe even engage in the occasional trash talk to fan viewer interest - has also hurt the sport. Pankaj Advani, one of its bigger stars, is reticent, non-controversial and anything but pompous of his achievements. Rivalries in sport work like a charm. Theres very little of it in cue sport. The ones that exist arent storied or publicized enough. We need a couple of good rivalries to latch on to peoples imagination, feels Geet Sethi.A primary concern for the sport is its lack of television coverage. A crushing blow in frenzied times such as these. The reason again lies in the sport itself: not being spectator-friendly enough. Talking to ESPN, Peter Gilchrist admits despite decent attempts at making the game shorter, little has changed. Weve tried everything: 50-up, 100-up, 150-up, points format, time format but unfortunately theres still no people. We probably need a bunch of girls in bikinis, he says, over a laugh, At least it worked for beach volleyball.While shorter formats, like the 100-up, which essentially means a player would have to first score over 100 points to win a frame in a usually best of five frame format which can last anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour are more popular among a wider base, it hasnt really translated into tangible numbers for the sport.Geet Sethi, easily Indias most celebrated name in billiards, argues that the relevance of the sport in the 21st century isnt a fair question, choosing instead to focus on the factors which contribute to its peripheral status. To make billiards spectator friendly is a tough call, he says, Given that weve tried the shorter formats as well. Take a sport like shooting or archery for instance. Theyre really boring to watch and anything but spectator-friendly, but being a part of the Olympics has changed the dynamics. We need to be back in the Asian Games at least, to start with.Cue sports were part of the Asian Games from the 1998 Bangkok edition, but were dropped at the 2014 Games in Guangzhou due to financial constraints. It does not feature in the Commonwealth Games either. That makes the Olympics a pretty long shot. Getting into the Asian Games would be a huge boost and would lead to a revival. The future of billiards, I feel, lies in making a comeback at the Asian Games, which would be fantastic. Or else we would be plodding along like we currentlyy are, adds Gilchrist, agreeing with Sethi.ddddddddddddOne way, Kothari suggests, of making the game more interesting is by adding a circle somewhere on the table, either by way of a thin round film or a laser beam. We could say that if theres any ball in that circle and you score points from there you get 30 extra points, he says, The circle could be put in a very difficult spot in the table, where the ball cannot go too often, maybe inside the D and we could have a blue ball as one of the strikers instead of having a spotted white and spotted yellow one. If the ball stops inside a particular circle, you lose a point that you scored or if it stops inside a particular zone you lose your visit and a certain number of points. We need to change the way viewers see the game. We need to make it more colorful. Maybe the white can be done away with totally and we could have a green or blue striker instead.Ascribing billiards sagging interest to a sea change in the sponsorship scenario, Gilchrist says that through the 1990s when ITC sponsored billiards events, there was money in the sport. Since tobacco sponsorship ended, billiards too is more or less gone, he adds. ITC was known to have spent close to Rs 250 crore annually in sponsoring cricket, golf, billiards, tennis and horse racing events before pulling out in 2001 following the central governments decision to ban advertising and promotion of tobacco products. It did, however, return following a three-year hiatus to hold the 2005 Sunfeast Open tennis tournament in Kolkata. Billiards needs an influx of cash to pick up. Its not really a spectator sport. Its more of a strategic game and the best players make it look far too easy, says Gilchrist, who won his first world title in 1994.While a snooker and pool league is in the works for a possible March 2017 launch in India, billiards isnt part of the plan. Hosting the ongoing World Championship cost the Billiards and Snooker Federation of India (BSFI) close to Rs 70 lakhs, out of which the primary sponsor, Karnataka Tourism, paid Rs 15 lakhs. The lacunae lies within the federation itself, says BSFI secretary G Balasubramaniam, We are unable to promote the event (World Billiards Championship) because of our limitations. Private sponsorship is little. What is worrying is that even for a big-ticket snooker event like the Indian Open, which is beamed live and well-promoted it is very difficult to find willing sponsors.Earlier this month, the sports ministry in association with the BSFI inaugurated a billiards academy at the Talkatora stadium in New Delhi and the idea, Balasubramaniam adds, is to replicate the effort in five centres across the country. It is divided into two sections: one for beginners and the other for players, he says, Its been less than a fortnight so far and the numbers are on the rise in the beginners section. Also our application for promotion of billiards in schools and colleges is pending.An oft-talked about disincentive of the sport is its need for infrastructure to be played: Table, balls, cue, unlike say football or cricket. The accessibility to such facilities being limited to high-end social clubs or pool parlours makes it instantly unappealing to a large section of people. The jury has also been long out on the need for the sport to shed its bowtie-waistcoat dress code and become more casual, funky, colorful and most importantly, relatable. Kothari, though feels the sport is synonymous with its look. I like the waistcoat, maybe not the bowtie. It adds to the grace of the game. Gilchrist had a more ingenious idea to offer. We should probably turn up in trunks, he says, cracking up.While billiards future, some might suggest, hinges on its ability to reinvent and package itself better, Sethi has a word of faith. There will be periods when well have brilliant players, good rivalry and it will become popular. Then well go through a lull phase. It could be alternating decades possibly, he says.Billiards is a great survivor. China NFL Jerseys Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys NFL Jerseys Cheap Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap Basketball Jerseys Online Stitched Hockey Jerseys Wholesale Baseball Jerseys Football Jerseys Outlet College Jerseys For Sale Cheap MLB Jerseys Wholesale Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys For Sale Wholesale NFL Jerseys ' ' '