Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos knocked out Gina Carano with one second left in the first round to win the Strikeforce mixed martial arts women’s featherweight title at San Jose’s HP Pavilion. The Brazilian and Carano slugged it out all over the cage for what…

There’s peril and folly in the great outdoors. This month, there have been dramatic cases of both in the Bay Area and the Southern California desert. They’re reminders that when you set foot in a park, forest or wilderness, the most benign and easy adventure…

What you’ll see: This is one of the Bay Area’s prettiest back roads. In minutes, you launch from urban roads to country foothills with three nearby lakes and several trailheads. You then rise up through redwood forest to coastal lookouts. Start on Sir Francis…

Turns out, Usain Bolt can be beaten after all - in a ho-hum second-round heat, when he’s clowning around with the runner next to him and shutting down that effortless stride nearly 40 meters short of the finish. Smiling as he sauntered down the track in the…

Padraig Harrington bathed in roars as he marched along Hazeltine National’s tree-lined fairways Saturday. So did Ernie Els and Vijay Singh and Lucas Glover. The ever-hospitable people of Minnesota even cheered for Y.E. Yang, though they probably wouldn’t…

How do we get the Giants into the playoffs this season? One way would be to reform and revamp the umpiring system. But that’s not where I’d recommend fans, media and players direct their energy. The officials in the Giants-Dodgers series umped like the Four…

Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos knocked out Gina Carano with one second left in the first round to win the Strikeforce mixed martial arts women’s featherweight title at San Jose’s HP Pavilion. The Brazilian and Carano slugged it out all over the cage for what…

It’s been a strange preseason in college football, and that’s after you get past the usual suspensions, transfers and debates about Tim Tebow’s divinity. Except, of course, here in the Bay Area, where the news is mostly about what award Jahvid Best is listed…

- Matt Holliday, after playing down to the level of the A’s, has five games of three or more hits with contending St. Louis. Holliday has hit .493 since the July 24 trade, and his 37 hits in his first 75 at bats with a team are the most in 100 years.

While all eyes are on Tiger Woods, Ross Fisher was making a move. The Englishman was unfazed by the tough conditions at the PGA Championship, collecting birdies while everyone else was hanging on. He was bogey-free through his first 16 holes, giving him a…