The round-up

Which, in Sun-land, means that the headline below is completely fine:

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail dive into the Tiger Woods story headlong this morning, obviously reading India Knight’s piece in the Times and seeing if they cannot come up with a celebrity that fits the description of “blonde bimbo that we can somehow pin to Tiger”. See how close to the money you think they got, given the evidence they muster.

Pop singer Jessica Simpson has become the first celebrity to be linked to Woods.

It was claimed yesterday that she became close to the billionaire sportsman after singing the U.S. national anthem at a golf tournament in which he was competing in July.

Last night, however, a friend of the blonde singer and actress denied that she had a relationship with Woods.

Miss Simpson, 29, arrived at the tournament in Bethesda, Maryland, with her boyfriend of 18 months, American football star Tony Romo.

A source told the U.S. magazine Star: ‘Tiger liked what he saw and let her know it.’

Woods, 33, was photographed with his arm around Miss Simpson’s waist. Miss Simpson and 29-year-old Mr Romo split up just eight days later.

The friend said last night: ‘Nothing went on. Jessica was only at the tournament for a few hours. She met Tiger, they took a photo and that was that.’

A spokesman for the singer declined to comment.

So, to summarise: She sang the national anthem at a golf tournament. A friend claims there was a relationship, a source says Tiger thought she was pretty and told her. Coincidentally, she split from her then-boyfriend soon after. The friend (the same friend who called relationship? It’s hard to know when everyone’s made-up anonymous) then says nothing happened, and Jessica Simpson’s PR has nothing to say about it. Wow.

Back to Tottenham, and our favourite columnist John Cross is hyperventilating in the Mirror about Spurs’ plans for Pavlyuchenko and Bentley:

Of course, said rant rather overlooks the fact that Harry didn’t say profit, he just doesn’t want to sell them particularly cheap given they spent more than £30m on the pair:

‘It is up to the chairman and whether he gets the money and it is the right offer. I would not let them go cheaper. Otherwise you end up giving them all away.

‘I won’t let my emotions get in the way of the fee we get for Pav and Bentley.’

It’s not as if Redknapp doesn’t have previous when it comes to chatting about transfers, but Cross might want to leave those comments alone.

And as we write, it’s been another day of ‘Chris Gayle plays the match situation‘. Having bucked the trend of his innings by batting all day in Adelaide last week, Gayle took on the Australians this evening in Perth in response to their 520 for 7 declared. 25 overs into the West Indian reply, he’s the first man out for the tourists, having scored 102 of the first 136 runs with 9 fours and 6 sixes in 72 balls. When Gayle gets it right, he’s the most exciting batsman in Test cricket by a long way - but let’s hope that the Windies didn’t need a different kind of innings today.