SEEKONK, Mass. – Two years ago, Ronnie Williams became the second driver not named Matt Hirschman to win a Tri Track Open Modified Series presented by All Phases Renovations championship.

In 2021, he looks to do it again.

Williams, driving for veteran car owner Gary Casella, returns to Tri Track driving the familiar No. 25 he’s taken to victory lane before, and hopes to be consistent enough to contend for the title at the end of the six-race schedule.

“Gary can be a clown when you’re around him, it’s fun,” Williams said. “If you look at Gary, you might not think he can set up a race car… but every single place we go, we are fast. He wants to win, I want to win…. and we just work well together.”

Williams is set for another busy year as a driver, competing full-time chasing his third SK Modified championship at Stafford Motor Speedway, while also running with the Tri Track Series and some select NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and Open Modified events. Over the last three years, Williams has become one of the quickest and most successful rising stars the Modified ranks in New England offers.

“It’s fun,” Williams said of all of his driving ventures. “It’s better when we are winning… last year we didn’t have as much success as we would have liked, but hopefully this year we can turn it back around and have some more fun.”

Tri Track will visit three New England race tracks – Monadnock Speedway, Star Speedway and Seekonk Speedway. Williams has previous wins at Monadnock and Seekonk, but has yet to hold the checkered flag at Star.

“I don’t have a ton of laps at Star but I love it,” Williams said. “It’s a weird little track. We almost had a win there in the SBM when Ron Silk beat us, which was a great race. It’s one track that both Gary & I really want to win at this year. Hopefully we can get it done.”

Williams knows the competition is going to be stout, and the path to wins, or the championship, will not be easy with Tri Track.

“You have a guy like Matt Hirschman racing and a lot of people from a lot of different parts of New England coming to run with Tri Track,” Williams said. “It provides some of the best racing and brings the best drivers.”

The Tri Track Open Modified Series presented by All Phases Renovations season begins on Saturday, May 1 at Monadnock Speedway.

RICHMOND, Va. — One would be hard pressed to find a stronger start to a NASCAR Cup Series season than the one Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin has had this year.

Through nine races, the pilot of the No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry has finished in the top five eight times, including a season-best runner-up finish during Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway.

His worst finish through the first quarter of the schedule was an 11th-place run at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway on Feb. 28, giving Hamlin an average finish of 4.2. He’s also led 694 laps.

That level of consistency has rewarded Hamlin with an 81-point lead over second place in the regular season standings — a cushion of more than a full race — and the Virginia native shows no signs of slowing his torrid pace.

But for all those accolades, one thing is missing from Hamlin’s stat line: A victory.

Hamlin, who won seven races in 2020, is among a strong contingent of winless drivers through nine Cup Series races, a club that includes two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch, defending titlist Chase Elliott and 2014 champion Kevin Harvick, who won nine races last year.

The difference between the latter trio and Hamlin, however, is that Hamlin has been in position to win more than half the Cup Series races contested this season. His winless status hasn’t been for a lack of effort, or a lack of speed.

“It’s frustrating, for sure, but I’d rather be where I am than [where] Alex Bowman [is],” Hamlin told reporters following Sunday’s race at Richmond. “I don’t care that he’s got a win. We’re smashing everyone. I’d still rather be where I’m at.”

Hamlin dominated over the weekend at the three-quarter-mile track, leading 207 of 400 laps, but lost control of the race during a restart with 13 laps left after Harvick cut a tire and hit the wall.

Third-running Alex Bowman got a better launch on the bottom of the track, pulled even with Hamlin and eventually passed him with 10 laps to go before driving to victory in the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

Hamlin was disappointed with coming up short after dominating so much of the Richmond event, but admitted that Bowman’s team figured out a way to be better when the money was on the line.

“We should have won. Certainly the 48 [Bowman] wasn’t better than us all day,” Hamlin noted. “You’ve just got to lead the last lap … have to figure out how to lead that last lap, [because] that’s pretty much all that matters.

“I don’t know if we had a dominant car [at Richmond], but it was definitely top two,” Hamlin added. “There were times the 19 [Martin Truex Jr.] was better and times the 22 [Joey Logano] was better during that one round. But we were certainly top tier.”

Despite a near-miss Sunday, Hamlin isn’t changing his approach as the Cup Series looks toward Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway on April 25 and draws closer to the mid-point of the regular season.

“There’s frustration [about not winning], for sure, but it doesn’t change my attitude or work ethic. I’m going to work just as hard to win next week and the week after that,” Hamlin said. “When you’re a competitor, you want to win, especially when you have a great opportunity to win like we had this time around. It just didn’t happen.

“I just have to digest it, look at it and see where we could have been a little bit better. But ultimately there’s nothing I can do. My effort was as high as it could be,” Hamlin continued. “There’s nothing that’s glaring that I feel like I could have or should have done different. Maybe there is. I’ll go back and look at it, [see if we can] figure it out.

“All in all, it just seemed like the 48 [Bowman] had it gripped up there for a couple laps at the end.”

As for his approach toward the Cup Series playoffs, Hamlin’s goal is simple – acquire as many playoff points as possible so he has a buffer when it comes time to set the Championship 4, whether that’s through stage wins, race wins or by winning the regular-season championship.

“We don’t know if we need [a points cushion] until the playoffs. If we had this performance, we’d just go right to Phoenix and be fine. But you can’t plan on that,” Hamlin tipped. “You could have a bad race, anything can happen. You don’t know what you need until you need it, so we’re trying to do the best we can and get all the points we can.

“Ultimately all we can control is our effort week-to-week. I feel like we’ve done that well so far.”

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Jennifer Jo Cobb, who was going to make her NASCAR Cup Series debut this weekend at Talladega Superspeedway for Rick Ware Racing, has not been approved by NASCAR to compete.

Any driver who wants to make their NASCAR Cup Series debut must be approved by NASCAR officials before doing so. Cobb applied, but was not approved by NASCAR officials.

pic.twitter.com/skTr0C3fQL

— Rick Ware Racing (@RickWareRacing) April 19, 2021

Rick Ware Racing has not announced a replacement driver for Cobb, who was slated to drive the No. 15 for the team this weekend at Talladega.

NEW YORK -- The NHL has suspended Vancouver Canucks defenseman Alexander Edler for two games for kneeing Toronto forward Zach Hyman.

Edler also will forfeit $103,448 under the terms of the league's collective bargaining agreement and will be eligible to return on Saturday.

The collision happened in the second period of Vancouver's 3-2 overtime win Sunday when Edler took out Hyman in front of the Maple Leafs' bench.

The left winger dropped hard to the ice and stayed down for several minutes before play was halted and a trainer came to his aid. Hyman went directly to the locker room and did not return.

"For me, those plays happen," Vancouver coach Travis Green said Sunday night in his postgame media availability. "You don't like to see them. Eddy's a hard player, but he's not a dirty player. He doesn't try to hurt guys ever."

The Canucks were playing their first game since March 24 after being sidelined by a COVID-19 outbreak.

"We had a lot of good efforts. Even guys that didn't play a lot, they gave it everything they had tonight. As a coach, it all starts right there," Green said. "You would hope that it would give them some belief. But I believe our group had the belief already. Our group is a competitive group, they love winning and they're resilient.

"A win like this will go a long way."

The Canucks and Maple Leafs meet again Tuesday night in Vancouver.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Patrick Marleau's speed on the ice is legendary. His skating is a primary reason the 41-year-old San Jose Sharks forward has endured through 23 seasons to play in his 1,768th career game on Monday in Las Vegas, passing Gordie Howe for the most in NHL history.

Off the ice, his speed is legendary for a very different reason: No one in the dressing room can get naked faster than Patrick Marleau.

Players have 18 minutes during intermission. The coach takes some of that time to address the team. The rest of the time is for recharging and preparation. Some players take their helmets off. Some untie their skates to relieve some pressure. But Marleau could enter the room and disrobe so quickly that one former teammate said it was like he was made of Velcro. He would then leave to either jump into the cold tub in the trainer's office or into a cold shower.

"I've never seen a guy get dressed and undressed so fast, just to get in the cold tub after each period. Which is insane. It's absolutely insane. Maybe he isn't all there," said Dan Boyle, a former teammate of Marleau's on the Sharks.

The PGA Tour plans to stop onsite COVID-19 testing for players, caddies and officials in July, according to a memo sent to players outlining the circuit’s adjusted protocols.

Players and caddies who have been fully vaccinated will be exempt from testing and while the memo points out “the Tour does not plan to mandate vaccination,” the circuit is encouraging it.

“There are common misconceptions and concerns about infertility, altering DNA, microchipping, becoming infected with COVID as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine. These misconceptions and concerns are false,” the memo read.

Starting in July the Tour will end onsite testing, which began when the circuit restarted its schedule last June, and anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated will be required to take a PCR test within 72 hours of arriving at a Tour-affiliated event. Those tests will be at a player’s own expense and will be a “condition of competition.”

Under the adjusted policy, anyone who has been fully vaccinated and comes in contact with someone who has COVID-19 won’t be forced to quarantine unless they have symptoms associated with the coronavirus.

Here's a look at what's happening on the PGA Tour and elsewhere this week, and how you can watch it:

PGA Tour

Zurich Classic of New Orleans

Thursday-Sunday, TPC Louisiana, Avondale, La.

Course specs: Par 72, 7,425 yards, designed by Pete Dye

Purse: $7.4 million

Defending champions: Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer (fueled by Skittles, Rahm and Palmer won by three shots over Tommy Fleetwood and Sergio Garcia in 2019, the last time this event was played)

Notables in the field: Rahm/Palmer, Patrick Cantlay/Xander Schauffele, Tyrrell Hatton/Danny Willett, Cameron Champ/Tony Finau, Marc Leishman/Cameron Smith, Collin Morikawa/Matthew Wolff, Scottie Scheffler/Bubba Watson, Billy Horschel/Sam Burns, Louis Oosthuizen/Charl Schwartzel, J.B. Holmes/Robert Garrigus, Scott Piercy/Akshay Bhatia, Kevin Tway/Kelly Kraft, Martin Laird/Nick Taylor, D.J. Trahan/Ricky Barnes

Tee times: TBD

TV schedule: Thursday-Friday, 3:30-6:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); Saturday-Sunday, 1-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel) and 3-6 p.m. ET (CBS)

LPGA

Hugel-Air Premia LA Open

Thursday-Sunday, Wilshire CC, Los Angeles

Course specs: Par 71, 6,450 yards, designed by Norman Macbeth

Purse: $1.5 million

Defending champion: Minjee Lee (defeated Sei Young Kim by two shots in 2019)

Notables in the field: Lee, Kim, Lydia Ko, Jin Young Ko, Nelly Korda, Inbee Park, Danielle Kang, Lexi Thompson, Brooke Henderson, Michelle Wie, Sophia Popov, Patty Tavatanakit, Gabi Ruffels, Jennifer Kupcho, Brittany Altomare

Tee times: TBD

TV schedule: Thursday-Friday, 3:30-6:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); Saturday-Sunday, 1-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel) and 3-6 p.m. ET (CBS)

European Tour

Gran Canaria Lopesan Open

Thursday-Sunday, Lopesan Meloneras Golf, Gran Canaria, Spain

Course specs: Par 70, 6,503 yards

Purse: 1.5 million euros

Defending champion: Inaugural event

Notables in the field: Lucas Bjerregaard, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Eddie Pepperell, Thorbjorn Olesen, John Catlin, Sam Horsfield, Grant Forrest, Chris Wood, Toby Tree

Tee times: TBD

TV schedule: Thursday-Friday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. ET (Golf Channel); Sunday, 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)

Other notable events

KORN FERRY TOUR: Veritex Bank Championship, Texas Rangers GC, Arlington, Texas, Thursday-Sunday

SYMETRA TOUR: Copper Rock Championship, Copper Rock GC, Hurricane, Utah, Thursday-Saturday

USGA: U.S. Women’s Amateur Four Ball, Maridoe GC, Carrollton, Texas (April 24-28)

Anniversaries

• Monday (1987): Davis Love III earns the first PGA Tour victory of his career at the RBC Heritage.
• Wednesday (1974): Lee Elder wins the Monsanto Open and becomes the first Black player to earn an invitation to the Masters.
• Thursday (1984): Nick Faldo earns his first PGA Tour victory at the RBC Heritage.
• Friday (1951): Charlie Brown, in describing various trees to his friend Violet, mistakes a flagstick for a “bamboo tree” in the first golf-themed Peanuts comic strip.
• Sunday (1996): President John F. Kennedy’s golf equipment, split into lots of woods, irons, and putters, sells at a Sotheby’s auction for $1.3 million.

A year after both of the USGA's national opens were played without spectators because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the governing body announced Monday that it plans to re-open its gates to the general public, albeit on a limited basis, for the U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open in California.

Both major championships will feature a “limited number of fans” who will either have to show proof of vaccination or return a negative COVID-19 test result before arrival.

California residents must show proof that they’ve been vaccinated at least 14 days prior to the championship or have a negative test result. Out-of-state fans, meanwhile, will need to show proof of vaccination before the event. Regardless of vaccination status, face coverings must be worn at all times while on-site.

The U.S. Women’s Open will be held June 3-6 at Olympic Club, while the men’s U.S. Open will be held two weeks later, June 17-20, at Torrey Pines.

"Last year, we missed the energy that fans bring to our U.S. Open championships," said John Bodenhamer, the USGA's senior managing director of championships. "We are grateful to our local and state health and safety officials in California to be in a position to welcome some fans back this year to witness the greatest players in the world contending for these prestigious championships, while working to maintain the health and safety of all involved."

The PGA Tour has contested several events with reduced crowds this year while the Masters Tournament also recently welcomed limited patron attendance. The LPGA, though, has yet to offer general-admission tickets since the tour resumed play last July.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp called out Leeds for placing a Champions League T-shirt bearing the message "earn it" inside the Reds' dressing room ahead of the two clubs' 1-1 Premier League draw on Monday.

For their pregame warm-ups, Leeds players took the pitch at Elland Road wearing the shirts, which also displayed the message "Football is for the fans" on the back.

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Liverpool confirmed on Sunday they were one of six Premier League clubs to become part of a breakaway Super League. And despite the league's plans to have 15 permanent members benefit from the potentially lucrative 20-team enterprise, Klopp said his team did not need to be reminded how qualification for Europe's top competition works.

"I saw there are warm-up shirts, which we will not wear. We cannot, but if someone thinks they have to remind us that we have to earn it to play in the Champions League, it's a joke. A real joke!" Klopp said.

"And they put [the shirt] in our dressing room. If it was a Leeds idea, thank you very much. Nobody has to remind us. Maybe they should remind themselves."

The German, who has spoken out in the past against a European Super League, told Sky Sports television that his opinion had not changed since 2019 when he said he hoped it never happened.

"I heard first-hand about it yesterday," Klopp said. "We got some information, not a lot to be honest. Most of the things you can read in newspapers or wherever.

"It's a tough one. People are not happy with that, I can understand that. But I cannot say a lot more about it because we were not involved in any processes, not the players, not me. We didn't know about it."

While no fans are allowed into Elland Road, a large banner draped across the seats read: "Earn It on the Pitch. Football Is For the Fans."

Some fans gathered outside Elland Road to voice their anger, with one banner reading: "RIP LFC. Thanks for the Memories."

A philosophical Marcelo Bielsa called the announcement of the Super League unsurprising.

"It doesn't surprise me. The most powerful teams have achieved their power from the competition against the rest of the teams. Now it looks like they don't need us anymore to earn more money and the method they use is to discard the ones that no longer serve their objectives," he said before the match.

"This didn't happen from one day to the next. A lot of regulations and rules that limit inequality have been made more flexible and granted this situation to become inevitable.

"There are two sides about this. The most powerful teams are what they are because of what they produce and the attention they provoke. But the rest of the teams are indispensable. The core of competition is helping the weak to develop, not the excess growth of the strong. The logic that prevails in the world, and football is not out of it, is that the rich are richer at the cost of the weak being poorer."

The game itself was crucial for Liverpool's hopes of qualifying for next season's Champions League. They now sit in sixth place but a victory would have seen them leapfrog into fourth spot, above Chelsea and West Ham United.

Leeds' Twitter account poked fun at Liverpool after the result.

"#LUFC hold Super League side Merseyside Reds to a 1-1 draw after late Llorente equaliser," the tweet said.

FULL TIME: #LUFC hold Super League side Merseyside Reds to a 1-1 draw after late Llorente equaliser

— Leeds United (@LUFC) April 19, 2021

Speaking after the game, Klopp reiterated he and his players had nothing to do with the Super League plans.

"I don't think it is right. They put them in our dressing room, I don't think we deserved that. I don't like the way a lot of people are talking about Liverpool.

"This is a fantastic football club. In this specific moment we can't blame the team for that. I take the criticism for everything, but this we have nothing to do with.

"Now people write articles about what they should do with it. People are shouting at us. We have to be careful because we are people as well. We have to be careful. I understand all the talk and I don't like it as well."

Liverpool midfielder James Milner added to BBC Sport: "I can only give my personal opinion and I don't like it one bit and hopefully it doesn't happen.

"It [the current system] has worked well for a long time. What has made it special what we have done over the last few years is we have earned the right to win the Champions League and earned the right to win the Premier League. The product we have currently is very good.

"It is difficult. Coming into the game today Leeds fans were making their feelings shown. As players we don't really have a say, so it feels a bit unjust. All we can do is try and win football matches."

Liverpool fan group Spion Kop 1906 announced that they and other groups involved in decorating Anfield's iconic Kop during the coronavirus pandemic will remove their flags as a protest against the club's involvement in the Super League.

"We, along with other groups involved in flags, will be removing our flags from The Kop," the group wrote on Twitter on Monday.

"We feel we can no longer give our support to a club which puts financial greed above integrity of the game."

American-owned Liverpool are joined by Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur as founders of the Super League, along with AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.

Supporters' clubs of all six Premier League clubs have come out in opposition to the Super League, which would be a direct rival to UEFA's Champions League -- the competition Liverpool won for the sixth time in 2019.

Information from Reuters was used in this report.

Florentino Perez has said he's "completely sure" Real Madrid and other Super League participants won't be thrown out of this season's Champions League over their role in the proposed breakaway group -- and blasted the current competition's format, saying it's "only attractive from the quarterfinals" and clubs "will all die" without major reform.

Madrid president Perez -- one of the driving forces behind the Super League project, who has been named as its chairman -- is the first senior executive involved in the plan to speak publicly since Sunday's announcement.

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"The Champions League is attractive from the quarterfinals, that's all," he told late-night Spanish talk show El Chiringuito. "We play against small teams that aren't attractive. Young people prefer to entertain themselves with other things. But if we do it all season, five games on Tuesday, five on Wednesday, that would be unstoppable.

"What would bring in money is the 15 clubs playing each other every week. That's the greatest show in the world, there's nothing like it," he added. "A Real Madrid-Manchester [United] or a Barcelona-Milan is more attractive than Manchester [United] against a small club.

"What does the world demand? We have fans in Singapore, in China, all around the world, you see that on social media, the followers they have. That's what brings in money."

12 clubs -- AC Milan, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Internazionale, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur -- have joined the ESL as founding members.

The breakaway competition, intended as a replacement for UEFA's Champions League -- which announced its own plans for reform on Monday -- has said that three more clubs are expected to join, while another five would qualify based on performance.

"Today, with the income from the Champions League as it is, we'll die," Perez said, stressing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. "Less audience, less money. We'll all die, the big clubs, the medium-size clubs, the small clubs. They say the new Champions League format will come in by 2024, we'll be dead by then."

Perez is the Super League's first chairman, while Andrea Agnelli of Juventus and Joel Glazer of Manchester United have been named as vice chairmen.

The project has met vociferous criticism from football's governing bodies, fans and other high-profile clubs who are not involved.

La Liga called the ESL a "selfish, egotistical proposal designed to further enrich the already super rich" in a statement on Monday.

Sevilla -- currently in fourth place in La Liga behind the three ESL backers Atletico, Real and Barca -- expressed their "complete rejection of a tournament based exclusively on economic parameters."

Perez, 74, who was reelected without opposition as Real Madrid president for another four-year term earlier this month, also rejected the suggestion that the club could be thrown out of this season's Champions League.

Madrid are due to face Chelsea in the first leg of their semifinal on Tuesday, April 27, before the return leg on Wednesday, May 5.

"They won't throw Madrid out of the Champions League, for sure," Perez said. "Not Madrid or [Manchester] City or anyone. I'm completely sure. Or La Liga either."

Jesper Moller, the Danish member of UEFA's executive committee, said on Monday that he expected Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester City to be removed from the competition.

Perez also insisted that players "can be completely calm" about being banned from participating in UEFA and FIFA international tournaments such as the World Cup, "because that won't happen."