Swimming

Australia has gained ground on their head-to-head matchup with the USA, pushing the Americans to the tightest-ever finish in Duel in the Pool history.

The meet, which started on Friday morning for the open water relay at Bondi Beach and shifted to the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre on Saturday and Sunday night, saw the Dolphins score 283 points to the USA’s 309.

Aussies Chelsea Gubecka, Kareena Lee, Kai Edwards and Kyle Lee excelled in the open water, using the last 50 metres of the 4x800m open water relay to finish over the top of the Americans.

Come Saturday night more than 3,000 home fans flocked to Sydney Olympic Park and saw individual race wins from the likes of Emma McKeon (women’s 3x50m butterfly skins), Meg Harris (women’s 50m freestyle), Mack Horton (men’s broken 800m freestyle), Kaylee McKeown (women’s 100m backstroke) and Will Martin (mixed 3x50m multi-class freestyle skins).

Mollie O’Callaghan, Jenna Strauch, Brianna Throssell and Kaylee showed their strength to win the women’s 4x100m medley relay.

The night however belonged to the USA, as they took a 156-147 points lead into the final day.

Both nations were trading the lead throughout the first events on Sunday evening. The likes of Lani Pallister (women's broken 800m freestyle), Shayna Jack (women's 3x50m freestyle skins), Emma McKeon (women's 100m butterfly), Kaylee McKeown (women's 3x50m backstroke skins), Mollie O'Callaghan women's 100m freestyle, Mack Horton (men's broken 400m freestyle), Chelsea Hodges (women's 100m breaststroke), Kaylee McKeown (women's 200m mystery medley) and Will Martin (mixed 3x50m freestyle multi-class skins, mixed 100m multi-class form stroke) all recording wins.

The USA pulled away for good after enjoying success in the men’s events.

Zac Incerti, Cody Simpson, Madi Wilson and Mollie ended the night for Australia with a mixed freestyle random relay win.

Among the 39 events held across the three days, Swimming Australia trialled new concepts for races and scoring alongside the traditional formats.

For the first time in world swimming, able-bodied athletes and para athletes competed as a team in the same event. Australia’s Emma McKeon and Grayson Bell linked up with para-athletes Ellie Cole and Will Martin in the mixed 4x50m freestyle relay, but the US proved to be too strong in this relay.

Individual event experiments included breaking down long-distance swimming into multiple legs, while others featured a process of elimination where the two slowest swimmers would be eliminated until the last two remaining had a 1v1 duel for 1st and 2nd place.

An extra element was added to influence team tactics, as both nations had scoring boosts available to them – such as a powerplay, double dip and flag frenzy – once each night.

Next up for the Dolphins will be the FINA World Short Course Swimming Championships this December in Melbourne.

Golf

Adam Scott has found form at the right time, playing clutch golf to secure a spot in the final event of the PGA season, the Tour Championship at East Lake.

Ranked 77th in the standings less than two weeks ago before the PGA playoffs began in Memphis, USA – Adam has finished 5th at both playoff events to date which has seen him rise into 29th on the standings to be under the top-30 cut off, joining Cameron Smith.

In the final round of the Championship at Delaware this morning Adam found himself in the bunker on the 18th hole, needing a superb shot to save par and to get through to the Tour Championship.

He landed the ball within 60 centimetres of the hole and finished it off to save par, scoring -10 for the event and staying alive in the PGA playoffs.

Lucas Herbert was the next best Aussie in Delaware, going seven-under.

Read more here.

Tennis

Tokyo 2020 Olympian Ellen Perez has made back-to-back WTA 1000 doubles finals, with the latest coming at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati.

Ellen and her doubles partner Nicole Melichar-Martinez (USA) were beaten in the final by Lyudmyla Kichenok (UKR) and Jelena Ostapenko (LAT) 7-6(5), 6-3.

The last 15 matches for Ellen and Melichar-Martinez have produced excellent tennis, having won 11 of those contests - which included a quarter-finals appearance at Wimbledon earlier this year.

Read more here.

Earlier in the week fellow Olympian Ajla Tomljanovic continued to play some of her best tennis, recording back-to-back top-20 wins for the first time in her career.

In doing so she made the quarter-finals in Cincinnati, where she was knocked out by world no.21 Petra Kvitova (CZE) 6-2 6-3.