BOSTON -- Dee Brown took four dribbles and put the basketball down by his feet.

It was Feb. 9, 1991, and the Celtics rookie guard was standing near midcourt at Charlotte Coliseum, preparing for his first dunk of the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. On his feet were a special pair of hometown shoes: black Reebok Omni Zone Pumps with an orange ball covering the pump atop the tongue.

The Pump had been on the market for nearly 15 months.

Brown wanted to make sure he was close enough to the judges -- Julius Erving, George Gervin, Bobby Jones, Maurice Lucas and Dan Roundfield -- so they could see what he was doing while still being in view of the fans.

As soon as Brown put the ball on the court, he bent down and started pumping the shoes. The more he pumped, the louder the fans got, the more the players sitting courtside cheered.

"I could see in the corner of my eye that they're like, 'Oh, what? Oh, look what he's doing, like this is crazy, this is different,'" Brown said. "And the fans got excited about it and the players."

During the flight from Boston to Charlotte, Joanne Borzakian Ouellette, who was Reebok's director of global marketing for the NBA at the time, went through a list of things that Brown could potentially do to help raise awareness for the shoe. Wear Pump socks. Wear a Pump hat. And one idea was to pump up the shoes. But Brown was half listening. He was too in awe of where he was about to go and too nervous to fully be in the moment on the plane. He spent most of the flight thinking about the dunks in his repertoire.

Neither Borzakian nor anyone else at Reebok knew to what lengths Brown was about to go.

The dunk

For Brown's first dunk, he lobbed the ball to himself, double clutched in midair and threw down a reverse dunk. Then he bent down and let the air out of the shoe.

The crowd went nuts. Brown, unbeknownst to him or anyone in The Hive, had ignited a new era of the dunk contest.

Before each of his next six dunks, Brown repeated the same process. Pump. Dunk. Pump. Dunk.

Brown flew his way into the finals against Seattle SuperSonics high flier Shawn Kemp. Before the contest, Brown was sitting next to Kemp in the stands when a fan came over to them and asked about Kemp's haircut. Coincidentally, Brown had a haircut that was almost identical to Kemp's. The fan looked at Kemp and asked if the guy sitting next to him was his little brother. Kemp laughed. Brown didn't think it was so funny.

"I was like, 'No, I'm not his little brother. I'm in the contest,'" Brown remembered. "[The fan said] 'Oh, you're Dee Brown.' That right there was kind of the extra little fuel I needed to get going."

Pumping his shoes wasn't the only marketing ploy Brown wanted to unveil that night. The plan for his final dunk was for him to wear a Reebok Pump hat, dunk it and then dunk the ball with his other hand. But right before his turn, the NBA informed Brown that he couldn't wear the hat because it had a logo on it and therefore was considered a prop.

He had a backup dunk, but he didn't think it was unique enough.

"Deep in my heart, I knew I had to think of something different, more signature, more Michael Jordan free-throw-line-ish, Dominique windmill type of dunk that's iconic," Brown said. "Like, you see that dunk, or that type of dunk, you know exactly where it came from, it was the first one ever done."

As Brown started running toward the basket, he decided to close his eyes. As he was in midair, he realized nobody would know he had his eyes closed, so he decided to put his hand over them, but his momentum kept carrying his arm forward, eventually moving his forearm over his eyes.

"That was the first time I ever did it," Brown said. "I never practiced it before. Either I was going to make it and we're talking about it 30 years later, like we're doing now, or I was gonna miss it and we're going to talk about it 30 years later, remember that dude who tried to dunk without looking and hit the side of the backboard.

"I'm glad I made it."

That dunk sealed Brown's win over Kemp.

And that night changed everything for Reebok.

On the Monday morning after the dunk contest, Reebok took out a full-page ad in USA Today with a photo of Brown's no-look dunk. It went viral before going viral was a thing. The Pump joined a rare list of shoes referred to by name: Jordans, Dunks, Air Force Ones.

Pumps.

And it happened overnight. Thirty years later, although it's all but disappeared from shelves, the Pump still holds its place as one of the most iconic sneakers of all time.

All thanks to Dee Brown.

The origin of The Pump

The first Pump felt like a "brick," said Chris Walsh, the former Reebok vice president of operations. John Morgan, the former director of basketball at Reebok, who signed Brown to an endorsement deal, said it was 30% heavier than most other shoes on the market. But it served a practical purpose. Some players, like Brown and Steve Smith, wore it because it helped support their ankles.

"I hated my ankles taped ever since I started getting them taped in college," said Smith, a former 16-year NBA veteran who's now an analyst for Turner Sports. "So, this was me being able to say, to the team, the Miami Heat at the time, I don't need my ankles taped because I had the Reebok Pump."

From that standpoint, the Pump was a success. But did the extra air filling the shoe help players of all levels jump higher?

"Can't tell that secret," Brown said, laughing. "Some things I got to go to my grave with. I'm not telling the secret on that one.

"I'm going to say, yes."

The Pump's first endorser was the Human Highlight Reel, Dominique Wilkins, who wore it in his 1990 Slam Dunk Contest win.

"I think being a high flier and kind of a charismatic guy, it kind of went hand in hand in a sense," Wilkins said. "I think the dunk contest being a part of that really helped elevate it as well. So, it was the right time for me. The timing was perfect."

Soon after Brown made the shoe a household name, Reebok began spreading the technology across a variety of other sports.

Michael Chang, who won 34 singles titles including one Grand Slam, wore the pump to support his ankles, but also for fun. Chang remembered pumping his shoes before a big point, hamming it up for the crowd. Other tennis players took notice. They'd pump his shoes while he was wearing them to see what all the fuss was about.

"A lot of guys would ask. A lot of guys would be jealous," Chang said. "Some guys even ask about it now. Like, 'Where can I get a pair of those?'"

When Greg Norman, the 20-time winner on the PGA Tour who won two majors, started wearing the shoe in the late 1980s, his fellow golfers noticed. And laughed at him.

"Guys made fun of me, of course, and I said, 'Hey, don't knock it until you try it,'" Norman said. "My feet are very comfortable and I don't get sore feet at the end of the day."

Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith said the Pump gave him extra stability and support around his ankles. That feature, combined with the shoe's ability to handle the turf, appealed to Smith. The look of it, however? Not so much.

"The style just hadn't caught up to it and it made it real difficult to have a real sexy-looking football shoe where you have cleats and all that stuff added to it," Smith said.

While Brown's dunk launched the Pump to new levels, it was also the culmination of years of work to help Reebok catch up to Nike in the sneaker wars of the 1990s. Reebok fell behind in market share, popularity and visibility in the late 1980s, with profits stagnant from 1987 to 1990, according to The New York Times. Nike was booming, on the other hand, with its Air technology spreading beyond running shoes, and the release of the Air Jordan and Air Max lines.

The future looked dire for Reebok, which didn't have any promising technology in the pipeline.

That started to change in 1988, when Reebok acquired tennis and ski brand Ellesse. During the meeting to finalize the acquisition, former Reebok CEO and owner Paul Fireman was given all of Ellesse's developmental technology, which included an inflatable tongue in a shoe that was taken out of a ski boot created by Ellesse founder Leonardo Servadio.

After the deal was done, Fireman created a team called Reebok Advanced Concepts, which was led by Paul Litchfield. One of the group's early assignments was to develop a better basketball shoe, and it began working with the Boston engineering firm Continuum. Eric Cohen, an engineer at Continuum at the time, said Reebok's initial partnership with Continuum was to work on their "energy return system" -- what Reebok could have put inside the midsole of the shoe to help people jump higher. When they realized there was nothing that could be added to shoes to help vertical leaps, Fireman gave the team the inflatable bladder from Ellesse.

Reebok had found a bit of success with its first basketball shoes, the BB series, which featured three models -- the 4600, 5600 and 6600 -- that were revolutionary at the time because of their soft, comfortable leather, in contrast to most other basketball shoes on the market that were made with thick leather.

In the fall of 1988, Reebok was setting out to create a shoe that was part ankle support, part tech and part toy. The company wanted to make a shoe that could accommodate a young person's foot through growth of a half or even a full size, an attractive feature to parents.

One of the very early prototypes that was developed between Reebok and Continuum was gluing an inflatable blood pressure cuff inside a basketball sneaker. The prototypes were given to the basketball team at Cohasset High School in Hingham, Massachusetts, about 20 miles southeast of Boston. After wearing it on the court, one of the players said, "These make me feel like I can play harder."

That's all Fireman needed to hear. He gave Litchfield's team and Continuum carte blanche to develop the sneaker.

Making the Pump

But building an inflatable bladder that could withstand the impact of a 200-pound basketball player stopping or cutting on a dime was easier said than done. Reebok and Continuum partnered with a small medical-device manufacturing company, Dialetrics, to work on the inflatable bladder. Together, they created the second-most innovative piece of footwear technology at the time, next to Nike's Air concept. The major difference between Nike's Air and Reebok's Pump technology was location. The Pump initially surrounded the foot with a bladder, which eventually changed into just a tongue bladder -- a major factor in the shoe's high initial price of $170. Nike's Air sat under the heel.

The first two prototypes of the Pump -- the Pro Pump, which was self-inflating, and the Pump Shot, which had a heel pump -- arrived in Massachusetts on Feb. 4, 1989. A day later, Reebok brought the shoe to The Super Show in Atlanta, which at the time was the world's largest sports product show. Reebok unveiled it to much fanfare but discovered at the show that Nike had been working on its own inflatable shoe, the Air Pressure. Litchfield caught a glimpse of the Nike display and one thing went through his mind.

"I'm like, we're screwed," Litchfield said.

Fireman, though, didn't flinch.

Reebok continued on with its version of the Pump, which it believed was inherently better than Nike's for one primary reason: Nike's had a separate hand-held pump. That eventually doomed the Nike shoe.

"Our reaction to it was pretty awful," said Scott Bedbury, who was Nike's worldwide director of advertising at the time both pump-style shoes launched. "We were never good at following. It was Nike following, which we never ever did well. I don't think that shoe lasted more than the season."

After the Atlanta show, Litchfield told the Pump team that he wanted the shoe on shelves by Black Friday that year. That was nine months away and all Reebok had at the time was a prototype. Reebok had enough feedback from testing to know a few design changes were necessary. Sometime in March or April, Litchfield gave the shoe to Paul Brown, Reebok's vice president of design at the time. Brown asked for a week to work on it.

A week later, Brown returned the shoe to Litchfield. He had moved the pump to the tongue and covered it with silicone to look like a basketball. Litchfield asked for one more change: Move the release valve from the heel to the tongue, next to the pump. One of the Pump's signature design elements was the logo on that orange basketball. IIt was designed by Jane Hathaway, an in-house graphic designer for Continuum. She was only given 15 minutes to create a better logo than the one Reebok had initially made, so she ran to her computer, and came up with the logo Reebok still uses today.

"I wanted it to feel bold, contemporary, yet simple," Hathaway said via email.

The Pump as we know it was born. Foot Locker ordered between 5,000 and 7,000 pairs, mostly as a favor to Reebok because of their long-standing relationship. All that the engineers at Continuum had to do was re-engineer the inflation mechanism in about five months.

Everything was running smoothly until the shoes arrived in Reebok's Massachusetts warehouse. About 3,000 pairs weren't inflating. A stitching mistake during production had cut off the air from the release valve. Once it was inflated during testing one last time, that was it. Knowing his job was on the line, Litchfield worked with Reebok's stitching room to rip out the stitching, replace a piece and restitch all the shoes.

The Pump was released on Nov. 24, 1989 at $170, the highest-priced sneaker on the market by about $70, Fireman said. From conception to market, the Pump took a year -- unheard of in the sneaker market at that time -- to create.

Despite the price, the Pump became a hit.

A year later, Reebok re-engineered the Pump yet again, moving the inflatable bladder to just the tongue. It lowered the price significantly. Reebok shipped 75 million pairs of shoes around the world in 1990, according to a 1991 article in The New York Times. Its revenue grew by 18% to $2.2 billion.

The Pump had made Reebok a dominant player in the shoe game. Dee Brown made it a "cultural phenomenon," Hardaway said. Shaq's signature shoe was a Pump. Shawn Kemp wore it. Eventually Allen Iverson's shoe, the Question, was made as a Pump.

Then the Pump slowly faded away.

The fall of the Pump

The basketball shoe has been replaced with the InstaPump Fury, a vastly different iteration that's a stripped-down version of the original idea. It has become popular among collaborators and fashion houses like Chanel and Vetements. Reebok also collaborated with Armani for a men's dress shoe with the Pump technology in 2010. Reebok tried to find different uses for the Pump technology, putting it in soccer shoes, ski gloves, weightlifting belts, hockey skates, inline skates and sideline jackets.

Today, the Pump from the early 1990s has become more of a fashion accessory than a performance product.

So, what happened?

"They would bring back these original models of the Pump, so say let's say Shaq Attack -- so Shaq's shoe. They'll bring that back in the two original colors," said D.J. Senatore, a Pump collector who has about 500 pairs of Pumps. "Then they would do literally like five or more colorways of that shoe and just destroy it. There were pairs I wouldn't order, I didn't want to order at the store or something and I'd end up getting them online, [a pair] that retails at $160 I remember buying pairs for like $25. So, that was the thing and they would do that with every model.

"It just got flooded and then once they're sitting, nobody wants them. It's not cool anymore, and nobody buys them."

Some of the Pump's former endorsers like former NBA players Danny Manning and Sam Perkins think the shoe would be a hit on the retro market. And while it might be, partly because of the desire to have old shoes and the nostalgia it sparks, Senatore, who worked with Reebok during its 25th anniversary of the Pump, thinks the market for Pumps has all but disappeared, ending the run of one of the most iconic basketball shoes of all time -- at least for the time being.

"I think that the thing is it really hits a chord for a lot of younger people," Senatore said. "It's a fad as well as a like a pop culture icon kind of thing.

"The original stuff will still sell for some money, but unfortunately the Reebok resale is just, it's dead."

The Atlanta Braves signed catcher Travis d'Arnaud to a two-year, $16 million contract on Sunday, the team announced.

The 30-year-old d'Arnaud split last season between the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays. After struggling to hit with both the Mets and Dodgers, d'Arnaud rebounded with the Rays, hitting .263 with 16 home runs and 67 RBIs.

He played 92 games for the Rays, seeing most of his time at catcher (76 games, 62 starts) but also made 16 starts at first base with 21 games overall at the position.

The Braves are in need of a catcher after Brian McCann retired after the end of last season.

The Braves have been aggressive this offseason, signing ex-San Francisco Giants closer Will Smith to a three-year, $40 million contract and re-signed reliever Chris Martin to a two-year, $14 million deal. The Braves also re-signed catcher Tyler Flowers and outfielder Nick Markakis to one-year deals this offseason.

D'Arnaud is a career .246 hitter with 63 home runs and 231 RBIs in 500 games over seven seasons.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Formula One drivers are almost universally against the idea of having a mini race on Saturday that would determine the starting grid for the following day’s grand prix.

The opposition began to swell during the Singapore race weekend where, when asked about the concept, Sebastian Vettel said, “I think it’s complete bull—-.”

Liberty Media, F-1’s commercial owner, is considering various ways to spice up the show and to make the racing less predictable. One proposal is to have a mini race on Saturday instead of traditional qualifying.

The grid would be set in reverse points order. The championship leader would start last and the driver who is last in the standings would be the polesitter. The results of that race would set the grid for Sunday’s headliner.

Making changes to the regulations this late in the year requires agreement from all 10 F-1 teams and the plan to try out the reverse grid concept at three events next year faced opposition from some teams.

Those opposed to the concept point out that the major rules changes for 2021 are supposed to spice up the show and create closer racing.

“If 2021 promises what it should, then there is no reason to change anything in the format,” driver Daniel Ricciardo said. “It would then dilute a lot of the weekend. We are already doing 22 races, imagine having 44 races. I love to race, don’t get me wrong, the idea of racing is great, but you dilute the product.

“You have costs as well, twice as much maybe, and then the potential of accident damage. I don’t know how teams would financially survive. I am against that because in 2021 there is enough changing, so the timing would not be right. That is a bit desperate and we are not in a desperate time at all.”

While Lewis Hamilton does not think the mini race is “a good idea,” he is not entirely opposed to the concept.

“Maybe in some places where there’s a massive deficit between first and last, maybe that’s not a bad race if it’s a track where you can actually overtake,” he said. “Would it make it more exciting? I don’t know.”

Hamilton supports juggling the format.

“I am not opposed to changing the weekend format because it can be very boring, the same format every weekend for 21, 22, 23 races,” he said.

One change that is not going to happen is having qualifying on Sunday morning and the race in the afternoon. The nasty weather caused by the typhoon during the Japanese Grand Prix weekend forced all track activity on Saturday to be canceled.

So qualifying had to be held on Sunday morning. That led to talk about having race weekends of two rather than three days. Race promoters the world over, however, remain vehemently opposed to any such plans as they need the revenue generated by Friday’s spectator attendance.

“It was a Super Sunday in Suzuka and that naturally reopened the debate about the shape of an F-1 weekend,” Ross Brawn, Formula One’s managing director of motorsports, said. “This is an aspect of the sport we have focused on in some detail as we work toward the rules that will govern F-1 over the coming years and we have taken into account the voices of all of the key players — the promoters, the teams and last but not least the fans.

“After careful analysis we have concluded that the best solution is to keep the event over three days, revising the Friday format but leaving the rest untouched, with qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday.”

The bottom line is F-1 needs to change to survive in the modern world.

“I understand that the purists might be concerned, but we should not be afraid to conduct an experiment otherwise we cannot progress,” Brawn said. “We don’t want change for the sake of change; we want to improve our sport because, rather like the development of the cars, if you stand still you risk slipping backward.”

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race winners Kyle Busch, Chase Elliott and Erik Jones have all won the Snowball Derby at Florida’s Five Flags Speedway.

Held every December since 1968 on Five Flags Speedway’s half-mile, semi-banked asphalt oval, the 200-lap Snowball Derby annually draws the best field of super late model competitors in the country to battle for the $25,000 winner’s prize.

While the purse is nothing to sneeze at, it’s not the biggest prize available to asphalt late model racers in the United States. If the purse isn’t the reason competitors flock to Florida every December, what is it?

In a lot of ways, the Snowball Derby is a proving ground for racers who are searching for an opportunity to advance their careers. A perfect example is 23-year-old Jones, who won his first Snowball Derby in 2012 after a thrilling battle with Busch.

“I think you just look at the caliber of drivers and cars that come to that race,” said Jones, who won the Snowball Derby again in 2013 on his way to a full-time NASCAR career. “As far as a super late model goes, I don’t think there is a better field during the year that you can really go and run in. If you can beat those guys, you’ve set a precedent on yourself that you can do it at that level.

“There are guys that race that race that have never been in a Cup car that are just as good as any guy in the field out here. I think you can kind of show that and if you can do that there (win), then I’d say you can probably go win anywhere.”

The list of the last 10 Snowball Derby winners reads like a who’s who of up-and-coming racers. Along with Jones, Busch (2009 and 17’) and Elliott (2011 and ’15), other competitors to win the event and go on to bigger and better things include John Hunter Nemechek, Christian Eckes and Noah Gragson.

Nemechek’s victory came in 2014 and by September of the following year he was gracing victory lane in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series. He’s since gone on to win six Truck Series races and one NASCAR Xfinity Series event, earning a full-time Xfinity Series ride with GMS Racing.

“It takes everything to go right, a lot of talent, a lot of hard work and determination to win the Snowball Derby,” said 22-year-old Nemechek. “It’s a very hard race to win. Some of the best names coming up through the ranks in the past have actually won that race.”

A deeper look into the history books supports Nemechek’s statement.

The first Snowball Derby was won by Wayne Niedecken on Dec. 15, 1968. In the years that followed, some of racing’s top stars visited victory lane at the Derby.

Daytona 500 winner Pete Hamilton graced victory lane at the Derby in 1974, Donnie Allison claimed the 1975 running of the race and three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Darrell Waltrip won the 1976 edition.

Some of the nation’s top short-track stars have also conquered the Snowball Derby. Midwestern short- tracker Rich Bickle holds the record for the most wins in the Derby with five triumphs that came between 1990 and ’99.

Butch Lindley, Jody Ridley, Gary St. Amant, Dave Mader III, Tammy Jo Kirk, Butch Miller, Jeff Purvis, Clay Rogers, Bobby Gill and Augie Grill have all had the pleasure of celebrating a Snowball victory.

Click below to continue reading.

SOMERSET, Ky. – The fourth edition of the Leftover at Tennessee’s 411 Motor Speedway on Nov. 30 will conclude the racing seasons for the Schaeffer’s Oil Iron-Man Championship Late Model Series and the Brucebilt Performance Iron-Man Modified Series

The Schaeffer’s Oil Iron-Man Late Models will race for a $5,000 top prize and the Brucebilt Performance Iron-Man Modifieds will battle for $1,200.

Also in competition at 411 Motor Speedway at the fourth annual Leftover on Nov. 30 will be the track’s Crate Late Models, 602 Late Models, Front Wheel Drives, and an Enduro. The Crate Late Model, 602 Late Model, Front Wheel Drive, and Enduro divisions will race under 411 Motor Speedway rules.

Robby Moses leads the Schaeffer’s Oil Iron-Man Championship Late Model Series points chase by 90 points over Joseph Faulkner, with defending series champion Joey Standridge, Casey Turman and Donald McIntosh sitting in position three through five in the points.

Defending series champion Clayton Miller leads the Brucebilt Performance Iron-Man Modified Series points by 46 markers over Jesse Rupe, while Amos Bunch, Wayne James and Rick Standridge hold down third through fifth position in points.

Nashville Predators forward Viktor Arvidsson will miss 4-6 weeks with a lower-body injury after being cross-checked by Blues defenseman Robert Bortuzzo in the first period Saturday night.

The 26-year-old Arvidsson was hit into the net, but a penalty was not called on the play. The league later tweeted that Bortuzzo faces a player safety hearing Sunday.

Arvidsson, who skated in his 300th career game, had an assist to help the Predators snap a six-game losing streak.

Arvidsson has 15 points in 22 games after scoring 34 goals last season.

NAPLES, Fla. — Sei Young Kim hit the putt of her life, a 25-foot birdie on the final hole of the CME Group Tour Championship to win $1.5 million, the richest prize in the history of women’s golf.

Kim closed with a 2-under 70 to beat an unlikely foe Sunday at Tiburon Golf Club.

Charley Hull of England birdied her last three holes for a 66, the last one a 12-footer that gave her a tie for the lead. Kim, who looked shaky in missing three straight birdie chances from 12 feet, tugged her approach to the top of a crown at the bag of the green. The winning putt - the money putt - was hit with perfect pace and broke sharply to the right as Kim pumped her fists in disbelief.

She finished a wire-to-wire victory for her third LPGA Tour title of the year and 10th of her career.

This was memorable for the finish and the reward.

Instead of a $500,000 first-place check and a $1 million bonus to a season points race, CME Globe wanted to award $1.5 million in official money to any of the 60 players who qualified for the season finale. That's $500,000 more than the previous record prize, $1 million at the U.S. Women's Open.

Kim, who never trailed during the final round, was feeling the heat coming down the stretch as Danielle Kang and then Hull took aim.

Kang, who made five birdies on the front nine, went quiet on the back until making a 30-foot eagle putt on the 17th. She hit 4-iron into 15 feet on the final hole, and her birdie attempt to tie for the lead was short. She closed with a 65.

Hull birdied five of her last seven, and when she saw the leaderboard on the 15th, she figured she would have to birdie everything coming. From short of the green on the par-5 17th, she hit putter up the slope to tap-in range to get within one shot of Kim. And on the 18th, she walked in the birdie putt.

Kim thought her biggest threat was Nelly Korda, who started one shot behind. Korda stalled with two hooked tee shots, the second one hurting her chances at a birdie on the 17th.

Walking up the 18th, Kim realized Hull had tied her.

“I didn’t know Charley finished at 17 (under),” Kim said at the trophy presentation. “What if I couldn’t make it? I could go to a playoff. It’s not good for me. It was really nervous when walking through hole 18. I was like: ‘OK, not a big deal. Try to play like a practice round.’ Even then, I was really nervous.”

She set nerves aside and made the only putt that mattered. The $1.5 million was more than she had made all year.

Kim finished at 18-under 270 and finished No. 2 on the LPGA money list behind Jin Young Ko, who tied for 11th and still had no complaints about her season. Ko won LPGA player of the year, the money title and the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average.

Ko won four times this year, including two majors.

Hull was an example of how the format change turned the Tour Championship into a free-for-all. She had only one top 10 this year and was No. 51 in the Race to CME Globe. A year ago, she wouldn’t have been eligible for the $1 million bonus.

“I gave it my best shot,” said Hull, who won $480,000 for being runner-up. She made $405,961 in her previous 21 events this year.

Korda, the highest-ranked American who had a chance to get to No. 2 in the world with a victory, tied for the lead with a birdie on the fourth hole. But she began to fall back by failing to birdie the par-5 sixth, scrambling for bogey on No. 9 and making a careless bogey on the 11th that put her three shots behind.

On both par 5s on the back nine, she hit tee shots well left, leading to bogey at No. 14.

“I thought about it once today,” Korda said of the prize. “I was just out there trying to play some golf.”

She birdied the last hole for a 71 to tie for third with Kang. Brooke Henderson shot 67 and finished alone in fifth.

Kim closed with a 2-under 70 to beat an unlikely foe Sunday at Tiburon Golf Club.

Charley Hull of England birdied her last three holes for a 66, the last one a 12-footer that gave her tie for the lead. Kim, who looked shaky in missing three straight birdie chances from 12 feet, tugged her approach to the top of a crown at the bag of the green.

The winning putt - the money putt - was hit with perfect pace and broke sharply to the right as Kim pumped her fists in disbelief.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was proud of Manchester United's valiant comeback at Sheffield United on Sunday, telling reporters that last year's team would not have produced such a strong response after going down 2-0 early on.

Quickfire strikes from Brandon Williams, Mason Greenwood and Marcus Rashford had United improbably in front, 3-2, with a little over 10 minutes to go but a stoppage-time Oliver McBurnie equaliser ensured a deserved point for the hosts in the end.

Asked what sparked his team's fight after a dismal first half, Solskjaer told Sky Sports: "Sometimes football is beyond tactics. The energy compared to ours in the first half and then we get that goal and we start to believe. The difference in the team this year compared to last is huge. They never give in. Last year we would have gone four or five down instead of coming back. We would not have been able to come back."

United looked listless in the opening 45 minutes and were lucky not to be down by more than two goals at half-time. But young academy products Williams, Greenwood and Rashford helped spark United back to life.

"Sheffield United looked like they wanted it more than us and believed in their game plan more than we did. We did not have a shot on target first half which is not acceptable," Solskjaer said.

He added: "When you are 2-0 down you have to go for it, play with less fear and just go for it. The average ages of the goals is less than 20, it's something we are proud of. It's a great experience for our young players because it's not easy to comeback at a place like this."

"It shows the quality that you can score 2-0 in a match and we didn't really perform. We were lacking in physicality in midfield today but the boys fought back and never gave in."

SHEFFIELD, England -- Sometimes football simply makes no sense whatsoever.

Manchester United were dreadful for large parts of their game at Sheffield United and deservedly found themselves 2-0 down with 18 minutes remaining. In the blink of an eye, they were 3-2 up and heading for a completely improbable victory, only for substitute Oliver McBurnie's last-gasp equaliser to earn the home side a 3-3 draw.

A point was the very least that Chris Wilder's men deserved after a performance full of guile and endeavour that illustrated exactly how they have come to find themselves sixth in the Premier League table with more than a third of the season already behind them. Had they finished on the losing side, it would have been cruel in the extreme.

That they even found themselves facing that predicament was testament to the pluck shown by a young Manchester United team who, for all the reservations about Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, continue to look like a team who are playing for their manager. Newly available after his shock dismissal by Tottenham Hotspur, Mauricio Pochettino is likely to stalk Solskjaer for some time yet, but this Bramall Lane escape act showed that the incumbent of the Old Trafford hot seat still retains some credit in the bank.

One of the things that is most frequently held against Solskjaer is his apparent belief that he can bring the glory days back to Manchester United simply by trusting in youth and encouraging his players to honour the club's attacking traditions, but the point gleaned in South Yorkshire was proof that, on occasion, such an approach can actually pay off.

It was to his academy graduates that Solskjaer turned as the away side belatedly went after the game in the second half and they repaid his faith handsomely. Two teenagers -- 19-year-old left-back Brandon Williams, with his first goal for the club, and 18-year-old substitute Mason Greenwood -- brought the visitors level before Marcus Rashford gave the men from Manchester a scarcely believable 3-2 lead with 11 minutes of the game remaining. It was the first time two teenagers had scored in a Premier League game for the club since Wayne Rooney and Giuseppe Rossi found the net against Sunderland in October 2005.

Daniel James may not have come through the Old Trafford youth system, but the 22-year-old Wales winger plays with the kind of pace and verve that Solskjaer wants to become the team's trademark. He teed up Williams for the visitors' first goal in the 72nd minute, a crisp half-volley into the bottom-right corner, and it was James's darting run and one-two with Anthony Martial that paved the way for Rashford to steer the ball into an empty net for the goal that -- briefly -- put the visitors in front.

The second goal was a 100 percent homegrown affair, with Rashford crossing from the right and Greenwood -- who had been on the pitch for only four minutes -- darting between a pair of defenders to slide the ball past home goalkeeper Simon Moore, who was standing in for another former Manchester United youth-team player in the shape of loanee Dean Henderson.

Throwing the kids on had worked so well that Solskjaer decided to pitch another one into the fray. But the move to introduce Axel Tuanzebe in place of Martial robbed the visitors of vital counterattacking pace and after gradually being forced back, they finally buckled in the 90th minute when McBurnie gathered fellow substitute Callum Robinson's poked cross on his thigh and stabbed a volley towards goal that David De Gea could not keep out. Even then the drama was not over, a VAR review for a potential handball against McBurnie keeping the 32,024 souls inside the stadium in suspense for a few moments longer before referee Andre Marriner finally delivered the verdict that the goal would stand.

"It's not always about tactics," said Solskjaer, who hailed the "character," "desire" and "belief" shown by his players in the second half. But despite their improved recent form, there was plenty on display here that helped to explain why his side lie nine points below the Champions League positions in ninth place.

- ESPN Premier League fantasy: Sign up now!
- VAR in the Premier League: Ultimate guide
- When does the transfer window reopen?
- Premier League winter break: All you need to know

Phil Jones embodied the visitors' difficulties. Brought into the starting XI in place of the injured Scott McTominay as Solskjaer switched to a back three, the one-time England international endured a nightmare first 45 minutes. Left sprawling on his back like an upturned tortoise by Lys Mousset in the build-up to John Fleck's 19th-minute opener, he did not reemerge for the second half, with Jesse Lingard (chalk up one more for the academy) taking his place.

There was little time for Solskjaer to assess the impact of the change, which facilitated a move to a 4-2-3-1 formation, before Mousset doubled Sheffield United's lead in the 52nd minute. The French striker robbed Andreas Pereira and swapped passes with Fleck before cantering to the edge of the box and expertly steering a shot into the bottom-right corner.

With Paul Pogba still on the sidelines, the visitors once again suffered from a stark lack of creativity in midfield. Fred and Pereira may both be Brazil internationals, but as they repeatedly conceded possession in tame fashion, it was left to Fleck and John Lundstram to show what modern central midfielders really look like. Freed to stream forwards by the bold and intelligent manner with which Wilder has built his Sheffield United team, the pair had their opponents on the ropes repeatedly.

In the end, neither team managed to land a knockout blow. But how it finished as a draw was anybody's guess.