Richmond County, GA | featured news

Arnold Palmer, who won the Masters Tournament four times and helped bring golf to the masses, died Sunday night, according to multiple media reports. He was 87.
Known as the “King,” Palmer won 62 PGA Tour events before evolving into a successful businessman and golf’s elder statesman. His go-for-broke style – hitching up his pants and unorthodox swing – endeared him to the public and helped make golf a sport for the common man.

ATLANTA — Rory McIlroy finally won the FedEx Cup when he least expected it.
McIlroy was three shots behind with three holes to play Sunday in the Tour Championship. Nearly two hours later, he holed a 15-foot birdie putt on the fourth extra hole to win at East Lake in a playoff and claim the $10 million FedEx Cup bonus.
In its 10th year, the FedEx Cup never had a finish like this.
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Christopher Douglas is planning to take a well-deserved break from competition.
Douglas bested the Ironman 70.3 Augusta field Sunday with a time of 4:08:04. He beat Helle Frederiksen, the top professional woman, by two minutes and defeated the second-best amateur male, Peter Davey (4:20:17), by 12 minutes.
“I’ve been going since March,” said Douglas, a PhD student in the combustion lab at Georgia Tech. “It’s time for a little time off for me.”

Helle Frederiksen thought her career could be over a year ago.
The Danish triathlete suffered a knee injury that affected her training since May 2015, forcing her to withdraw from the 2015 Ironman 70.3 World Championship and sidelining her for months. She described it in a blog post as “horrendous” and “the most challenging 12 months of my career.”
Frederiksen’s long road back led her to a clear path to the finish line Sunday.

Sheriff’s deputies are looking for two women who “fooled” a 64-year-old Augusta woman with an investment scheme and robbed her of $12,000.
According to a Richmond County Sheriff’s Office report, the women approached the victim outside the Peach Orchard Road post office Friday morning and told her they had found “thousands of dollars in cash” and would share some of it with her, if she would provide a similar amount so they could “launder” the money.

OXFORD, Miss. — Chad Kelly threw for 282 yards and two touchdowns and ran for another score to lead No. 23 Mississippi over No. 12 Georgia 45-14 on Saturday.
The Rebels (2-2, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) dominated every phase of the game, building a lead of 31-0 by halftime and 45-0 by midway through the third quarter.
Ole Miss broke a 10-game losing streak in the series dating to 1996.
“I can’t think of a time in my lifetime where a team has done that to Georgia,” said Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze.

As the Greenbrier players huddled up near the end zone after the game, the Wolfpack marching band chanted “Un-de-fea-ted! Un-de-fea-ted!”
Greenbrier focused on its ground game in the second half, scoring 28 unanswered points to roll to a 35-7 win over Cross Creek.
With the victory, the Wolfpack head into their bye week at 5-0, the second-best start in school history. Greenbrier will try to match the program’s record 6-0 start set in 1997 when they play Oct. 7 at Lakeside.

Plans are at last a go to renovate three historic buildings on the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center’s uptown campus off Wrightsboro Road to serve as housing for homeless and at-risk veterans, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The VA finalized lease agreements Friday with Free­dom’s Path LLC and Augusta Veterans Residences Limited Partnership, a foreign corporation, to renovate and operate buildings 7, 18 and 76, with construction to begin immediately, according to a statement.

Richmond County’s superintendent of schools reached out to Augusta commissioners to help close an underachievement gap that exists in certain Richmond County schools.
At an unusual joint meeting Friday of the commission and Richmond County Board of Education, Superintendent Angela Pringle said the district has been trying to change the prevailing narrative that only its magnet schools are performing well.
“People like to say it’s not working for anybody. It’s working for a whole lot more than it’s not working for,” Pringle said.

Five girls whose families are Irish Travelers from Murphy Village were taken from Our Lady of Peace Catholic School in North Augusta about three weeks ago by the state Department of Social Services, the Catholic Diocese of Charleston confirmed Friday.
At least two television stations in Augusta have reported that six girls were removed from their parents’ custody, but Maria Aselage, a spokeswoman for the diocese, said the number was five.
She said she could not provide further details.