Park Plays McCurdy in Final

Amanda McCurdy, playing in her first U.S. Women’s Amateur, defeated a struggling Paula Creamer, 6 and 4, Saturday at Erie, Pa., to advance to today’s final.

McCurdy, a 20-year-old junior at Arkansas, will play last year’s runner-up, Jane Park, 17, of Rancho Cucamonga. Park beat Sarah Huarte, 22, of Shingle Springs, Calif., in a match in which Huarte three-putted the 18th.

Creamer, 18, of Pleasanton, Calif., made short shots all week to reach the semifinals for the second consecutive year. But she had six bogeys and hit only five of 14 greens.

McCurdy went 1 up on the third hole when Creamer bogeyed the 152-yard par three, and she never lost the lead. Creamer missed the green to the right on the par-three 11th. McCurdy made par to win the hole to go 4 up.

At the 13th, Creamer missed the green long. Her pitch back was high and short, and she missed her putt to save par. On the 14th and final hole, Creamer’s second shot skimmed the fairway and landed at the bottom of a deep valley. She pitched up to the front left of the green but was unable to win the hole.

Park had been down to Huarte during much of their match. Huarte was 2 up after the par-four 13th hole, a 384-yard dogleg left. But she bogeyed the par-five 14th and the par-three 15th, evening the match heading to the 16th.

On the 338-yard, par-four hole, Park drove the ball under a tree in the rough. She punched it out to the fairway and finished with a bogey-five. Park won the hole anyway and went 1 up after Huarte three-putted for a double bogey. Huarte again three-putted on the 18th, losing the match.

Tennis

Ninth-seeded Flavia Pennetta won the Idea Prokom Open at Sopot, Poland, for her first WTA Tour title, defeating Klara Koukalova, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, after top-seeded Anastasia Myskina withdrew before the semifinals because of a rib injury.

Myskina walked out of the tournament Friday before her match with Koukalova was postponed because of rain. She is recovering from a sprained right rib and said she wanted to be ready to play in the Olympics.

Pennetta advanced to the title match by beating Marta Domachowska, 6-2, 6-2, in the semifinals earlier in the day.

Friday’s rain forced the men’s quarterfinals and women’s semifinals to be pushed back a day.

In the men’s draw, sixth-seeded Rafael Nadal defeated Felix Mantilla, 7-5, 6-1, in his second match of the day to advance to the final. He will play Jose Acasuso, who beat Juan Monaco, 6-4, 6-2.

In the quarterfinals, Nadal defeated Franco Squillari, 6-3, 6-4; Mantilla beat Adrian Garcia, 6-3, 6-3; Acasuso beat Jiri Vanek, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2; and Monaco beat Marc Lopez, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (6).

Motor Racing

Bobby Hamilton used a high pass to get around David Starr with eight laps remaining and won his fourth NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race of the season at Nashville Superspeedway.

Hamilton, the series point leader, won the Toyota Tundra 200 by 0.795 seconds, about three truck lengths. He ran a conservative pace in his Dodge through much of the 150-lap, 200-mile event and averaged 124.068 mph.

Hamilton, who started 15th, was fifth or higher from the 40th lap. He had Starr’s Chevrolet in his sights when the race restarted after the fifth caution and pulled next to him entering the first turn.

After they ran side by side down the backstretch, Hamilton was able to brake later than Starr entering the third turn, and then pulled away.

“I held two-tenths [of a second a lap] in my pocket all day,” Hamilton said. “Passing on the outside is something you don’t do.”

Michael Schumacher won the pole for today’s Formula One Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest with teammate Rubens Barrichello beside him -- the fourth time this season Ferrari will start from both front-row spots.

Schumacher claimed his seventh pole of the season with a fast lap of 1 minute, 19.146 seconds and is going for his 12th victory in 13 races. Barrichello was timed in 1:19.323.

BAR-Honda took both places on the second row, with Takuma Sato timed in 1:19.693, just ahead of Jenson Button (1:19.700).

After setting a track record in Friday’s opening qualifying round, Sebastien Bourdais broke the track record again in his Ford-Cosworth, winning the pole for today’s Champ Car World Series Grand Prix of Denver with a time of 59.942 seconds (99.516 mph) on the 1.65-mile course.

Two-time defending champion Bruno Junqueira, also in a Ford-Cosworth, qualified second with a time of 1:00.525.

Buddy Rice won his fifth Indy Racing League pole of the season, moving within one of the series record. His qualifying speed of 216.016 mph in a Panoz G Force-Honda for today’s Belterra Casino Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway in Sparta left him one short of Billy Boat’s record, set in 1998.

Andrew Myers and Scott Youngren split the twin 50-lap Southern California Auto Club Late Model series features at Irwindale Speedway in front of 5,000 fans.

Myers earned his first career win in the series in the first race, as he held off a late charge by Deryk Ward after leading the entire race, surviving a series of accidents that thinned out the 29-car field.

In the second race, Ben Walker took an early lead and kept pulling away from Youngren. But Youngren managed to get past Walker on the 22nd lap and pulled away for the win.

Soccer

American midfielder DaMarcus Beasley scored in his Dutch League debut, a 5-2 victory for PSV Eindhoven over RBC Roosendaal. Beasley, 22, a starter on the U.S. national team, was acquired on July 22 from Major League Soccer, where he played with the Chicago Fire.