Fanfare 2/3/03

Basketball

Chicago Bulls forward Marcus Fizer will miss the rest of the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in is right knee.

Fizer, in his third season, suffered the injury when he landed awkwardly while catching a pass and then making a layup in Friday night's loss in Portland.

The Bulls put him on the injured list Saturday with a sprained right knee, but an MRI revealed a tear in the ligament that will require surgery.

Fizer was averaging 11.7 points and nearly six rebounds a game for the Bulls as their top scorer off the bench after a shaky start this season that saw him spend lots of time on the bench because he was overweight.

Motorsports

Kevin Buckler's Porsche 911 GT3 ran a nearly perfect race on the way to victory Sunday in the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway.

Buckler, a race parts dealer from Sonoma, Calif., and last year's GT class winner in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, brought back the same team that finished seventh here last year, also winning the GT class.

This time, Porsche factory drivers Timo Bernhard and Jorg Bergmeister from Germany and Ghent, N.Y., resident Michael Schrom combined to lead nearly three-quarters of the endurance event and win by more than nine laps over the second-place Ferrari GT.

The winners covered 695 laps and 2,474.2 miles on the 3.56-mile road course that winds through the infield and also uses about three-quarters of the 2 1/2-mile NASCAR oval. Buckler's car averaged 103.012 mph over the 24 hours that began Saturday at 1 p.m. EST.

Second place went to the 360GT of Ralf Kelleners of German, Johnny Mowlem of England and former NASCAR driver Anthony Lazzaro.

Tennis

Lindsay Davenport won her first title since seriously injuring her right knee in November 2001, overpowering Monica Seles 6-7 (6), 6-1, 6-2 on Sunday in the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

The three-time major champion spent nine weeks on crutches after surgery early last year, then endured rehabilitation that included daily eight-hour sessions on a machine that repeatedly bent and straightened her knee.

One of the few players with the power to challenge Serena and Venus Williams, the 6-foot-2 Davenport relied on a booming serve and solid groundstrokes to beat the top-seeded Seles in 1 hour, 43 minutes.

Serena and Venus Williams will play for the United States in the first round of the Fed Cup against the Czech Republic in April.

The USTA and Fed Cup captain Billie Jean King made the announcement Sunday.

It is the fifth time in Fed Cup history that the world's top two players will be on the same team, and the first time since 1999 that the Williams sisters will play in the event.

Track

Russia's Svetlana Feofanova broke her own world indoor pole vault record Sunday, jumping 15 feet, 7 1/4 inches at the Norwich Union meet in Scotland.

Feofanova surpassed her previous mark of 15-7 set last March.

-- From wire reports