Sports news: Oglethorpe Invitational tees off today at Wilmington Island Club

GOLF

Oglethorpe Invitational

tees off today at Wilmington

The 35th annual Oglethorpe Invitational, one of the top amateur tournaments in Georgia, tees off today at Wilmington Island Club. Chandler Brewer of Tybee and Will Straub of Huntersville, NC get things started with a 7:45 a.m. tee off time.

Defending champion Henry Westmoreland IV isn’t in the field, but there is a strong contingent of talented golfers competing. R.J. Keur won the South Carolina Amateur Match Play championship last month. The left-hander out of UAB shot 65-66-69-69-269 to shoot a record 19 under par and win the 103rd Carolinas Amateur Championship earlier this month.

Keur, of Summerville, S.C., will be paired up with another hot player in Jack Comstock of Jacksonville, FL. Comstock recently finished in a tie for third at the Rice Planters Amateur, a tournament that teams up with the Oglethorpe and the Southeastern Amateur to decide the winner of the Aflac Cup.

Other players in the field include Savannah’s Jack Hall, one of the top senior amateurs in the Southeast. Hall won the Oglethorpe in 2005, 2010 and 2013. Past champions of the Oglethorpe include Gene Sauers, Doug Hanzel, Mark Anderson and Mark Silvers. The tournament will continue Friday, when a cut will be made from a little over 80 to the top 60 players, with the final round set for Saturday. For more information, go to http://www.oglethorpeinv.com.

TENNIS

Isner advances to

Atlanta Open quarters

ATLANTA — Second-seeded John Isner beat Canada’s Vasek Pospisil 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday night in the 6-foot-10 former University of Georgia star’s opening match in the BB&T Atlanta Open.

Coming off a victory Sunday in the Hall of Fame Open in Newport, Rhode Island, Isner is seeking his fourth Atlanta title in five seasons. He lost to Nick Kyrgios in the final last year.

Isner set up a quarterfinal match at Atlantic Station against Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko, a 6-3, 6-1 winner over sixth-seeded Donald Young. The American has 11 career titles, all at the ATP World Tour 250 level.

Third-seeded Gilles Muller of Luxembourg and Tommy Paul also reached the quarterfinals. Muller beat France’s Quentin Halys 6-4, 6-7 (1), 6-3, and Paul topped Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3.

In the top half of the draw, top-seeded Jack Sock will open play Thursday with a second-round match against Israel’s Dudi Sela.

Djokovic out

for rest of 2017

Novak Djokovic is going to miss the rest of this season because of an injured right elbow.

That means Djokovic will pull out of the U.S. Open and end his streak of participating in 51 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments.

The two-time U.S. Open champion announced his decision Wednesday, saying “this is the decision that had to be made at this moment.”

Until now, Djokovic has never missed a major tournament since he entered his first, the 2005 Australian Open. That is the third-longest active run among men and seventh-longest in history.