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07/29/2010 - White Sulphur Springs, WV (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Erik Compton, the two-time heart transplant recipient, fired a seven-under 63 Thursday to share the first-round lead with Matt Every at The Greenbrier Classic.
Playing on another sponsor's exemption and still battling stamina issues, Compton birdied nine of his last 15 holes for a career-best score on the PGA Tour.
Finishing his round after an 80-minute weather delay, Every matched his career low to tie Compton. He missed a 10-foot birdie putt on his last hole with a chance to take the lead by himself.
Jeff Overton, George McNeill and Pat Perez shared third place at six-under 64, while Brendon de Jonge, Charles Howell III, Aron Price, Matt Bettencourt and John Rollins all shot 65.
Compton's previous best score was a 67 in the first round of the Mayakoba Golf Classic in February.
"I'm not thinking about winning," he said. "I'm just thinking about one shot at a time and getting through the weekend."
Compton, of course, has had bigger things on his mind.
He was diagnosed as a child with cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, and received his first heart transplant when he was 12 years old. The second came in 2008.
Now 30, Compton is not just chasing his first win, he's grinding his way towards earning full-time playing privileges on the PGA or Nationwide Tour after losing so much time -- about four years in his late-20s -- to illness.
"In some aspect, I look at myself as an old guy," said Compton. "I also look at myself as a young guy in a career playing golf."
Compton has tried to make the best of his playing opportunities this season, which include six previous starts on the PGA Tour. He has also played two European Tour events in the Middle East and made one start on the Nationwide Tour.
He is playing this week for the third time since the U.S. Open, where his condition was thrust into the spotlight on one of golf's biggest stages. He shot 77-81 at Pebble Beach, the first of three straight missed cuts.
Compton likes to say that he knows he's supposed to shoot bad scores, but that isn't the way he feels things have been going for him recently.
"I was getting some bad breaks, and it was hard to take advantage of plugged lies and things like that," he said.
"Some guys miss six, seven cuts in a row and then win. I know I'm a good player, and I have a lot of the adversity in front of me with the game and health. But I always feel like if I stick in there and keep trying, something eventually good is gonna happen."
He found trouble early on The Old White Course with back-to-back bogeys at the second and third holes. But Compton made nine birdies and six pars the rest of the way.
"I hit some really close shots, a couple good putts, and I guess the round just kind of developed like that," he said.
Among his birdies was a 30-foot putt at No. 5 and "it was pretty much a blur after that," Compton said. "I was taking one shot at a time."
Compton knocked his second shot at the 572-yard 17th about 18 yards short of the green, pitched to three feet and rolled in the birdie putt to move atop the leaderboard by himself.
The round was delayed for 80 minutes because of threatening weather conditions, and when the second half of the draw returned to the course, Every made his move.
He finished off a birdie at the 17th -- his eighth hole -- with a four-foot putt to move within two shots of Compton's lead.
Every followed with a 14-footer at the 18th for his third straight birdie, polishing off a 30 on the back nine that also included a 15-foot eagle putt at the par-five 12th.
He followed that with five straight pars, then rolled in a 14-foot birdie putt at the sixth hole to tie Compton at seven-under.
"I drove it great and then made some putts," said Every. "My irons were pretty standard, but I ... was in play every hole. So it was nice."
Every earned his PGA Tour card by winning the season-ending Nationwide Tour Championship last October. He denied possessing marijuana after being arrested, along with two other people, at a hotel two days before the start of John Deere Classic earlier this month.
NOTES: This is the first year of this event...Compton and Every both earned their first 18-hole leads on the PGA Tour...Every also shot a 63 in the first round of the Phoenix Open in February...Justin Leonard (67), Jim Furyk (68), Sergio Garcia (68), John Daly (69) and David Toms (70) are some of the bigger names in the field.
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NEW YORK (AP) -By staying away from the cupcakes, Southern California earned itself a slim new ranking.
No. 1 always seems to fit USC.
Southern California jumped two spots to No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 on Tuesday, rewarded by voters for opening the season with a dominant performance on the road against a BCS conference opponent.
Georgia and Ohio State, the preseason Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, started their seasons with glorified scrimmages at home against FCS (formerly I-AA) teams. USC, however, traveled across country to face Virginia and could not have been more impressive in a 52-7 victory.
Georgia fell to No. 2 and Ohio State to No 3.
"We realize that rankings so early in a season are certainly fluid. But rankings do help establish a pecking order for things later in the season," USC coach Pete Carroll said in a statement. "As for moving into the No. 1 spot, it's nice to know that people think highly of our team."
Since reaching No. 1 on Dec. 7, 2003, the final-regular season AP poll of that season, USC has been No. 1 in 39 polls, by far the most of any team during that time.
"Some have said the voters are taking our schedule into consideration," Carroll said. "Our philosophy has always been to schedule outstanding opponents. We need to play challenging games like we just did, traveling across the country to open the season at Virginia. Games like that bring out our best and make us stronger as a team."
The latest voting was close. USC received 21 first-place votes and 1,539 points from the 65-member media panel. Georgia had 20 first-place votes and 1,506 points. Ohio State got 15 first-place votes and 1,497 points.
"I'd say we've evolved as pollsters," said Stewart Mandel of SI.com, who moved USC up to No. 1. "In the past, voters just kind of automatically moved teams up and kept teams where they were if they won."
Georgia beat Georgia Southern 45-21 on Saturday and Ohio State opened with a 43-0 win over Youngstown State.
"There's a bit of a growing backlash for the amount of teams that open with I-AA cupcakes," said Mandel, whose book "Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls" chronicles college football's controversies. "To see a team [USC] go on the road and play a New Year's Day bowl team from last season, and not only play them but destroy them, how could you not reward that team?"
USC also jumped past Georgia to No. 1 in the USA Today coaches' poll, which has the same top five as the AP poll.
"It's definitely a privilege to be No. 1. But it's not heartbreaking to me if we drop," Georgia offensive lineman Josh Davis said. "It doesn't matter right now what we're ranked. What matters is our next game and right now, that's Central Michigan. The only time the polls matter is in December. That's when the polls matter."
While the Bulldogs opened easy, their schedule ultimately should be as difficult as any team's. Georgia's big nonconference test is at No. 15 Arizona State on Sept. 20. The Bulldogs also face six Southeastern Conference rivals that've been ranked in the first two polls.
As for Ohio State, the Buckeyes play at USC on Sept. 13 before getting into the Big Ten schedule.
But of the teams in this week's top 10, USC and Texas are the only ones that don't play an FCS opponent, and the Trojans are the only team that doesn't play a team from a non-BCS conference.
Get the latest 2009 BCS Championship odds at MySportsbook.com.
The last team to drop from No. 1 after a victory was USC last season. LSU jumped from No. 2 to No. 1 when it beat Tulane 34-9, the same week the Trojans edged Washington 27-24 on the road.
The last preseason No. 1 team to lose the top spot after winning its opening game was Florida in 2001. The Gators beat Marshall 49-14, but preseason No. 2 Miami opened with a 33-7 victory over Penn State and the Hurricanes jumped to No. 1 with Florida slipping to second.
The next four teams in the new Top 25 stayed the same: No. 4 Oklahoma (two first-place votes), No. 5 Florida (five first-place votes), No. 6 Missouri (one first-place vote), No. 7 LSU (one first-place vote) and No. 8 West Virginia.
No. 9 Auburn and No. 10 Texas each moved up a spot, taking advantage of Clemson's big drop. Clemson, ninth in the preseason, fell out after losing 34-10 to Alabama on Saturday.
Also falling out after losses were Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh and Tennessee.
Moving into the rankings were No. 21 Fresno State, No. 22 Utah, No. 23 UCLA and No. 24 South Carolina.
Alabama moved up 11 spots after its big victory over Clemson.
The second 10 started with No. 11 Wisconsin, followed by Texas Tech, Alabama and Kansas. BYU and Arizona State were tied for 15th. Rivals BYU and Utah are both ranked for the first time since 1996.
South Florida was No. 17, ahead of Oregon, Penn State and Wake Forest at No. 20.
The final five were all the teams to move into the ranking, except for Illinois, which dropped four spots and tied South Carolina for No. 24.
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