Reuters Sports News Summary

Golf: Woods ready to return, commits to Memorial Tiger Woods announced on Thursday that he will compete at next week's Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio, the 15-times major champion's first PGA Tour event in five months.

Following is a summary of current sports news briefs. Devils tab Ruff as head coach, keep Fitzgerald as GM

The New Jersey Devils hired Lindy Ruff as their head coach, the team announced Thursday. New Jersey also will keep Tom Fitzgerald in the role of general manager. He was promoted when Ray Shero was fired Jan. 12. Nets sign veteran F Beasley

The Brooklyn Nets signed forward Michael Beasley as a substitute player for the remainder of the 2019-20 season, the team announced Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed by the team for Beasley, who will have to serve a five-game suspension for violating the league's anti-drug policy last April. Despite positive COVID tests, Frittelli, Watney and McCarthy tee off in Ohio

Dylan Frittelli, Nick Watney and Denny McCarthy completed the first round of the PGA Tour's Workday Charity Open on Thursday after all three spent 10 days in quarantine following positive COVID-19 tests. The trio were allowed to play after the Tour updated its return-to-work protocols on Wednesday and were grouped together at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Ohio. World record? - Chaos as Lyles runs wrong distance in high-tech meet

An ambitious attempt to held a high-tech athletics meeting with runners in different stadiums ran into problems on Thursday when world champion Noah Lyles ran too short a distance in the 200 metres event. Lyles, running in Florida, completed the race at the Inspiration Games in an eye-watering 18.90 seconds -- which would have smashed Usain Bolt's world record of 19.19 seconds and his own personal best time of 19.50. With one year to go, experts warn of high-risk Tokyo Olympics amid pandemic

With just over a year to go until the Tokyo Olympics, medical experts say the event could pose a grave health risk to the Japanese public, predicting that few people will have coronavirus antibodies and that vaccines will not be widely available. Olympic organisers and the Japanese and Tokyo metropolitan governments are scrambling for steps to prevent the pandemic from derailing the event. But they say concrete plans are unlikely to shape up before the end of this year. WTA adds events to calendar, announces new rankings system

The WTA on Thursday confirmed the addition of events in Prague, Czech Republic and Lexington, United States, to its provisional calendar which now features 21 tournaments. The WTA Tour, suspended since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, last month announced it would resume in Palermo on Aug. 3 and the tournaments in Prague and Lexington are scheduled to begin a week later. Golf: Woods ready to return, commits to Memorial

Tiger Woods announced on Thursday that he will compete at next week's Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio, the 15-times major champion's first PGA Tour event in five months. "I'm looking forward to playing in the @MemorialGolf next week," Woods said on his Twitter account. "I've missed going out and competing with the guys and can't wait to get back out there." Umpires union steps back from West's opinion on COVID-19

The Major League Baseball Umpires Association on Thursday distanced itself from comments made by veteran umpire Joe West in regard to the coronavirus pandemic. The MLBUA statement, which did not mention West by name, says the union "fully supports" the safety protocols agreed to by Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association. It also said that "regardless of any umpire's personal views, when we report for a resumed spring training and 2020 season, we will conduct ourselves as professionals and in accordance with the health and safety protocol." MLB 2021 schedule: Mets, Yankees to play on 9/11 anniversary

The Mets and Yankees will meet at Citi Field on Sept. 11, 2021 -- the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that devastated New York City. The game is among the dates to circle on the 2021 schedule, released Thursday by Major League Baseball. The release came just three days after MLB announced the 2020 schedule, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Olympics trials to be China's only international sport event this year

China will not hold any international sporting events this year aside from trials for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, underscoring the country's wariness about imported COVID-19 infections amid the global pandemic. China's General Administration of Sport, in a policy document published on Thursday, said coaches and athletes who are still abroad "are not required to return immediately." If they must return, the body said, they must strictly adhere to virus-prevention measures.