DURBAN, South Africa -- Dale Whitnell made two holes-in-one in the same round at the South African Open on Friday, having entered the day worrying about just making the cut at the European tour event.

The 36-year-old Englishman aced the par-3 second and 12th holes at the Durban Country Club in a wild 9-under 63 second round that included another eagle, seven birdies, two bogeys and one double bogey.

"I was struggling to make the cut, so I knew I needed to go out and play well and got off to a hot start as they would say," said Whitnell, ranked No. 545.

"Birdied the first and then hit a flush 7-iron on the second and didn't realize it went in until down the bottom they sort of cheered," he added. "That was lovely."

Whitnell then eagled the par-5 third and would have to wait a whopping nine holes for his second ace.

"I've never had one in tournament play. To have two in one day is pretty special," he said, a day after shooting a level-par 72 in the opening round.

INDIANAPOLIS -- If Isaiah Bond is correct, Xavier Worthy's record 40-yard dash time at the NFL scouting combine will last just one season but remain with Texas.

Last year, Worthy, a former Longhorn, ran a 4.21-second 40 and was eventually a first-round pick of the Kansas City Chiefs. Bond, who played last season at Texas after starting at Alabama, will run Saturday.

"I'm going to break the record tomorrow, for sure," Bond said Friday. "I anticipate running 4.20 or possibly, if I'm feeling great, I might run a 4.1."

Bond said his best time in training has been 4.23 leading up to the combine.

"I've been running my whole life," Bond said. "I've been one of the fastest my whole life, so I'm going to go out there, and when practice meets preparation, greatness is achieved. So I'm just going to trust my training and put on a show."

Bond was clocked at more than 22 mph in a win against UTSA last season. He finished the 2024 season with 34 catches for 540 yards and five touchdowns. He is the No. 10 wide receiver in Mel Kiper Jr.'s draft rankings.

He might not be the only receiver looking to break Worthy's record.

"If you blink," Oregon's Tez Johnson said, "you just might miss me."

INDIANAPOLIS -- Former Oregon Ducks quarterback Dillon Gabriel shot back at doubters who said he can't play in the NFL because of his height.

Gabriel, listed at 5-foot-11, is looking to join Kyler Murray, Bryce Young and Russell Wilson among the only starting quarterbacks who are under 6 feet.

"I've had the most experience ever as you can imagine starting in high school as a freshman all the way into my senior year on varsity, and then I've done the same thing in college," Gabriel said. "I'm a leader. I'm a winner. I've won at all three spots, and I've done it in big games."

Gabriel was a Heisman Trophy finalist. Young and Murray won the award in their final seasons. Having spent six seasons in college with stops at UCF, Oklahoma and Oregon, Gabriel said he feels he has learned a lot about football. But he added that he's still learning.

ESPN NFL draft analyst Jordan Reid has Gabriel as his fourth-ranked quarterback and projects him to be a Day 2 pick. Gabriel met with multiple teams, most notably the Las Vegas Raiders and Dallas Cowboys.

"I want teams to believe I can go out there and win games," Gabriel said. "If a team wants a winner, a franchise leader, they know who to call."

INDIANAPOLIS -- Shedeur Sanders didn't tone down his overt displays of confidence at Jackson State or Colorado.

Now, as the draft prospect continues his path to the NFL, there's no reason to expect him to modify that approach, either.

Speaking at the NFL scouting combine Friday morning, Sanders -- one of this year's top quarterback prospects -- made a bold prediction about the kind of impact he expects to make in the NFL.

"We went from Jackson State to Colorado and changed two programs back to back," said Sanders, who played at both programs under his father, Colorado coach Deion Sanders. "So, you don't think I could come to an NFL franchise and change the program again? It's history. We've done it again. It's always going to repeat itself."

Sanders' confidence was a theme of his media session, per usual. He was also followed, as always, by a personal videographer documenting his every move in Indianapolis.

The source of Sanders' confidence -- besides his father instilling it -- is the college success he enjoyed. Along with star two-way player Travis Hunter, he helped turn around Colorado's fate from a 1-11 team in 2022 before their arrival to 4-8 a year later to 9-4 (7-2 in the Big 12) in 2024.

And he adamantly promised to do it again in the NFL.

"That's the plan," Sanders said. "If that's not what you're trying to do, don't [pick] me. If you ain't trying to change the franchise or the culture, don't [pick] me. You should know history repeats itself over and over and over and I've done it over and over and over. So, it should be no question."

Sanders said he wouldn't alter his confident approach even while meeting here with NFL clubs. He was unapologetic when asked about those interactions.

"It was easy meeting with people because I'm going to just be myself," he said. "It's like you either like it or you don't."

Sanders is viewed as one of the top quarterbacks in the class, Miami's Cam Ward could potentially be selected before him. Sanders begs to differ. He said he views himself as the top quarterback available and questioned why some might feel differently.

"I've [turned around teams] at two locations already," he said. "So, it's simple. So, that's why when people say I'm not one of the top quarterbacks or the top quarterback, [I say] what are y'all going based off of? Because I did it year after year after year and you see the progression. So, it's like obvious it's got to be some type of external hate that you have for the family, for the last name -- for anything. Because I know I proved myself on the field."

Among the topics Sanders addressed at length was his relationship with former NFL quarterback -- and now Las Vegas Raiders part-owner -- Tom Brady. Brady has become a close mentor of Sanders' and continues to advise him through the pre-draft process.

The Raiders' need at quarterback and them possessing the sixth overall pick has become an interesting subplot around Sanders.

Asked about possibly joining forces with Brady in Las Vegas, Sanders said, "he's an all-time great. Being able to have that resource, being able to have that person I'm able to talk to and call whenever I'm having questions about the game, and he's able to relate to it -- he did it at the highest level -- is truly amazing. I'm thankful for that."

The relationship, Sanders said, dates back a couple of years and began with an overture from Brady, who invited Sanders to Tampa to work out with him. Sanders said he filmed each of those sessions and still refers to the advice Brady offered.

"Sometimes I go back and just listen to the things that he said at that time and it registers," Sanders said. "Everything that he said back then registers now and it applies."

Sanders, like his close friend Ward, won't participate in Saturday's on-field quarterback workouts. Both are expected to do so at their campus pro days instead.

Whatever anyone might think of that decision or anything else Sanders chooses does not seem to concern him, though. "You think I'm worried about what critics say or what people have to say," he said. "You know who my dad is? They hate on him, too."

Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich held an emotional in-person meeting Thursday with San Antonio Spurs players, who were all able to see him for the first time since his stroke in November, sources told ESPN's Shams Charania.

After the meeting, Popovich issued a statement saying he officially will not return as coach this season but hopes to return in the future. Sources told ESPN on Saturday that Popovich's NBA future is uncertain.

"I've decided not to return to the sidelines this season," Popovich said in a statement issued Thursday. "Mitch Johnson and his staff have done a wonderful job and the resolve and professionalism the players have shown, sticking together during a challenging season, has been outstanding.

"I will continue to focus on my health with the hope that I can return to coaching in the future."

Sources told ESPN that tears were shed from those in the room during Thursday's meeting and players saw physical signs of what Popovich has gone through since the stroke. The meeting, however, was filled with motivational messages, jokes, critique and praise from the coach, sources said.

Popovich is the NBA's winningest coach with 1,412 regular-season victories and another 170 in the postseason to go with five championships. On Nov. 2, he suffered what the team called a "mild stroke" ahead of a matchup against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Spurs have gone 22-30 since moving Johnson, an assistant, into the head coaching role on an interim basis.

Popovich, who has coached the Spurs since the 1996-97 season, turned 76 in January and is the oldest coach in NBA history. He agreed to a five-year contract extension with the team in 2023.

His visit to the team came a week after the Spurs announced that All-Star center Victor Wembanyama -- the defensive player of the year favorite at the time and someone who was a serious candidate to make the All-NBA team -- will not play again this season after deep vein thrombosis, or a blood clot, was found in his right shoulder.

Wembanyama, who came to San Antonio as the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft after playing as a pro in France, has called Popovich his biggest basketball influence.

"Pop isn't just a coach or a boss," the 21-year-old Wembanyama said earlier this month. "Pop is a leader."

Popovich's only public comment prior to Thursday about his health and his future came in mid-December, when he said he and his family were overwhelmed by "the outpouring of support we've received during this time."

ESPN's Michael C. Wright and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Bryce Harper is returning to the Philadelphia Phillies lineup Friday, two days after getting hit on the arm by a pitch.

Harper is scheduled to hit second and play in his usual spot at first base against the Boston Red Sox.

Harper had a bruise on his right arm after getting hit by a 92 mph pitch from Toronto Blue Jays left-hander Richard Lovelady. Manager Rob Thomson said Harper had a scheduled off day on Thursday and that the team was "not really overconcerned at all."

Thomson told reporters that the team's initial diagnosis was a bruised right triceps.

The two-time National League MVP is looking for his first hit of the spring. Harper is 0-for-2 with a walk in three place appearances in Grapefruit League play.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- New York Mets infielder Nick Madrigal could miss the entire 2025 season with a fractured left shoulder.

Manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters Friday that Madrigal needs surgery to repair his non-throwing shoulder, which the player dislocated Sunday when he fell to the ground after throwing a ball to first base against the Washington Nationals.

An MRI on Monday revealed the extent of the injury, with Mendoza saying at the time that Madrigal would likely be out for an extended period. The club immediately placed Madrigal on the 60-day injured list and acquired Alexander Canario from the Chicago Cubs for cash considerations.

Madrigal was looking for a fresh start with the Mets, who signed him to a one-year deal in January after he was non-tendered by the Cubs following a season in which he hit just .221 in 51 games.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- One team is a worldwide attraction fresh off its eighth World Series title. The other just lost an MLB record 121 games and hasn't won a playoff series since 2005. The one thing they have in common?

A spring training parking lot.

Both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox reside at Camelback Ranch during February and March, but life couldn't be more different as the two franchises prepare for a new season.

When Dodgers players reported to camp earlier this month, their clubhouse looked like a who's who of MLB All-Stars, while a trip through the White Sox's side of the building required frequent glances at the nameplates above the locker stalls to know who was who.

In the days since arriving, the Dodgers have been asked regularly about the opportunity to repeat. The White Sox are contemplating a host of other questions: How do you restore confidence in the clubhouse? What message of optimism can you deliver after a historic season of losing?

Even the Dodgers' morning workouts, normally a mundane early-spring ritual, have served as a celebration of the team that ruled baseball last October and dominated the offseason headlines again, with 1,000-plus fans showing up to get a glimpse of their favorite players. On the White Sox side of the facility, ESPN counted only 21 fans taking in one recent workout.

Still, entering a year in which their focus will be on finding the positives wherever they can, the White Sox are looking at the upside of sharing a spring home with the team certain to be the talk of baseball all season.

"It's a great opportunity to be matched up in a facility with a team that won the World Series, to have something to aim towards," general manager Chris Getz said. "How do we get to beat them? How can we compete? So yeah, the Dodgers have been a very successful organization. With that being said, we know what we need to do and we're set out to do that."

For Chicago, the season will be measured mostly by the steps taken by young players, and despite the ups-and-downs that come with trying to integrate them into a major league roster, the on-the-field results must add up to a better record than last year's 41-121 mark.

"I do think we're going to win more games than we did last year," Getz said as camp opened. "Unfortunately, there are going to be some growing pains along the way that at times is going to challenge your emotions, but that's part of the development of some of these players.

"Last year provided a lot of clarity for a lot of people, including myself. We had a lot of work to do, a lot more changes that needed to be made, and we were able to accomplish a lot of that this offseason, and that started with hiring Will Venable."

Venable is the first-time manager who checks all the boxes the front office was looking for when it set out to find someone to guide the White Sox through a fresh start. The 42-year-old former major league outfielder retired within the past decade and has since worked under some of the best managers in the business, including Joe Maddon, Alex Cora and Bruce Bochy.

"It's really about being present and doing the things that we can control now," Venable said of his opening message to his team.

Venable's roster is missing last season's best player, left-hander Garrett Crochet, who was traded to the Red Sox during the offseason. It does feature a smattering of holdovers, such as Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Vaughn and Andrew Benintendi (although the start of the outfielder's season will come later after he suffered a broken hand Thursday), who are hungry for an opportunity to be remembered for something other than last season's futility.

"When I signed here, I signed for five years knowing that there could be ups and downs, but I'm here for it and it's my job to go out there and perform," Benintendi said. "And last year I didn't do that. And not only do I feel like I let the fans or team down, I think [I let] myself down. You have such high expectations going into a season, and when you don't hit them, it's frustrating, but you just gotta keep going."

The White Sox also added a group of journeyman free agents looking to reboot their careers -- including Joey Gallo, Brandon Drury and Michael A. Taylor -- who were signed to short-term deals with an opportunity to compete for the playing time they weren't as likely to get elsewhere.

But the real excitement on Chicago's side of Camelback Ranch this spring is about a group of prospects -- six of whom appear on ESPN's Kiley McDaniel's top 100 list, including lefties Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith, the team's top picks in the 2022 and 2024 drafts, respectively. Both made their spring debuts Wednesday but won't break camp with the big league club. Also providing promise for the future is catcher Kyle Teel, who was the centerpiece of the White Sox's return for Crochet, and shortstop Colson Montgomery, who homered in the team's first spring game.

"We brought in a lot of really good veterans, so it's really cool just to talk to them, pick their brains, not even about baseball, just kind of how they go about their business, how you go about yourself as a pro," Montgomery said. "We also have a lot of really young talent, and I think that's what the fans and everybody should be really excited for."

Envisioning a future with Montgomery anchoring the lineup while Schultz and Smith top the rotation has helped Getz stay the course in Chicago's rebuild even as the losses at the major league level have piled up.

"There's no time to complain. And there's no one really to complain to," Getz said. "We got our hands dirty and got to work. There honestly wasn't a day to get away from it because we didn't want to get away from it. We wanted to dive in and continue to build this forward.

"Physically, mentally you rid yourself of negative things, but I personally have just channeled it for motivation to get better. And I know that is a cliché, in itself, but it's the truth of the matter."

Across the parking lot earlier this week, after watching $325 million starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto throw a bullpen session, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman reflected on the plight of his White Sox counterpart.

Friedman and Getz sometimes meet on the backfields at Camelback Ranch. Friedman sympathizes with Getz despite the vast disparity between their two rosters, which includes a payroll difference of more than $300 million. L.A. enters the season with an MLB-leading payroll that's approaching $400 million, compared with Chicago's 29th-ranked $83 million total, a number the franchise has pared down during its rebuild.

"It's certainly a challenge, but in a lot of ways there are a lot of fun aspects of it, building up and growing the various departments. And it's critical for everyone to work well together," said Friedman, who helped build winning teams in Tampa Bay without high payrolls. "And it doesn't mean you don't disagree, but putting those processes in place and being more innovative when you're at this point, it's similar to how we were in 2006 and 2007 with the Rays.

"There is a lot of strong foundation you can build during that time period that while mired in it is not fun. But when you look back, when you've reached a point of a steady state of success where a lot of that can be attributed to those early years, it can be very rewarding."

While Getz can only dream of those days for now, he is using his unique spring training vantage point to soak up how a model organization is run. Asked what he admires about the Dodgers, he pointed to the detailed ground-up approach that often gets overlooked amid the franchise's splashy offseason signings.

"Being a former farm director and being attached to a complex with the Dodgers and seeing what they do on a regular basis, having conversations, seeing the work that's being done, it's almost a small-market mindset in terms of really valuing the development of players," Getz said. "I respect how they go about it. It's not just spending; they do a lot of little things."

Of course, it is going to take more than little things for the White Sox to make up the distance between them and the Dodgers -- or even most of the rest of the other 28 major league teams -- and that was apparent as soon as the curtain opened on a new season of Cactus League games.

Last Thursday, 10,959 fans dressed primarily in Dodger Blue showed up for L.A.'s opener. Four days later, the White Sox played their first home game of the spring in front of an announced crowd of 2,636. The fans who did make their way to Camelback Ranch for the Monday afternoon matchup with the Texas Rangers were greeted with a familiar sight to anyone who followed the 2024 season: Chicago promptly gave up nine runs in the top of the first inning.

"Obviously, you're not going to meet a fan that wants to be where we're at right now," Getz said. "But if they're sticking by our side, when we get there, it's going to be a really special moment for a lot of people."

Jannik Sinner's nomination for the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award has been withdrawn after he was given a three-month doping ban.

The world number one accepted an immediate three-month ban from tennis earlier this month after reaching a settlement with the World Anti-Doping Agency over his two positive drugs tests last year.

The 23-year-old Italian, who won the Australian Open in January, is suspended from 9 February until 4 May.

"Following discussions by the Laureus Academy, it has been decided that Jannik Sinner's nomination for this year's Laureus World Sportsman of the Year Award is to be withdrawn," Laureus World Sports Academy chairman Sean Fitzpatrick said.

"We have followed this case, the decisions of the relevant global bodies and - whilst we note the extenuating circumstances involved - feel that the three-month ban renders the nomination ineligible.

"Jannik and his team have been informed."