McIlroy and Lowry team up for New Orleans victory. Green repeats on LPGA Tour

AVONDALE, La. (AP) — Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event Sunday, beating Chad Ramey and Martin Trainer with a par on the first hole of a playoff.

Trainer pushed a 6-foot par putt to the right of the cup to end it, with Lowry and McIlroy sharing a smiling embrace on the green.

The 34-year-old McIlroy, playing in the event for the first time, won his 25th PGA Tour title and first of the season. Lowry claimed his third PGA Tour victory. The Irish tandem closed with a 4-under 68 in the alternate-shot final round to match Ramey and Trainer at 25-under 263.

Ramey and Trainer began the day tied for 27th and shot to the top of the leaderboard with nine birdies between the seventh and 18th holes. They tied the alternate-shot tournament record of 63, but then had to wait nearly three hours to see if their lead would stand up.

They struggled to execute on the playoff hole. Trainer pulled his drive into the left rough, Ramey also yanked his approach left off the cart path and into the wall below the suites around the 18th green. Trainer then chipped short before Ramey finally got onto the green.

Ryan Brehm and Mark Hubbard missed the playoff by one shot when Brehm's birdie putt from the fringe narrowly missed to the right. Former BYU teammates Patrick Fishburn and Zach Blair, the 54-hole leaders, were tied for the lead until failing to birdie the par-5 16th and taking double bogey on the par-3 17th.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hannah Green closed with a 5-under 66 and won the LPGA Tour’s JM Eagle LA Championship for the second straight year, holing out twice from off the greens in a pivotal back-nine stretch at Wilshire Country Club.

A year after making a 25-foot birdie on the final hole of regulation and winning on the second hole of a playoff, Green took the drama out of this one for her fifth LPGA Tour victory and second of the year.

Green began the key run with a chip-in birdie on the par-3 12th and made a 6-foot birdie putt on the par-5 13th. Then, after Stark bogeyed the par-4 16th two groups ahead, Green ran in a 25-footer for eagle from the fringe on 15 to open a four-stroke lead, and she made it 5 under in five holes with a birdie on 16.

Stark birdied her last two holes for a 68. The 24-year-old Swede also finished second last week outside Houston in The Chevron Championship, two strokes behind top-ranked Nelly Korda in the first major of the year.

Grace Kim, four strokes ahead entering the weekend, closed 76-77 without making a birdie the last two days. She tied for 25th.

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — Brendan Steele closed with a 4-under 68 to hold off Louis Oosthuizen and win LIV Golf Adelaide by one shot at The Grange Golf Club.

The 41-year-old Steele finished with a 54-hole total of 18-under 198 for his first victory since he won his second Safeway Open in 2017 on the PGA Tour.

Steele had a streak of five consecutive birdies early in the round, before some putting jitters appeared in his back nine to open the door for a fast finishing pack of challenges including Oosthuizen (65) and former previous Masters champions Charl Schwartzel (64) and Jon Rahm (64).

Schwartzel and Rahm were among a group of five players at 16-under 200, with Joaquin Niemann (66), Andy Ogletree (65) and Dean Burmester (67) in a tie for third.

Defending champion Talor Gooch shot 70 and finished in a tie for 26th at 10-under.

Australia-based Ripper won the team title on the second playoff hole against South African-based Stingers.

GOTEMBA, Japan (AP) — Yuto Katsuragawa began the back nine with five birdies in seven holes that carried him to a 7-under 63 and a three-shot victory in the ISPS Handa Championship, the third Japanese player this year to claim a European tour title.

The tournament was co-sanctioned with the Japan Golf Tour. Katsuragawa follows Rikuya Hoshino at the Commercial Qatar Masters and Keita Nakajima in the Hero Indian Open for Japanese winners. A year ago, Ryo Hisatsune won the French Open.

Katsuragawa started the final round three shots out of the lead, but got into the mix when 54-hole leader Casey Jarvis and Yannik Paul faltered on the front nine. The 25-year-old pulled away and won by three over Sebastian Soderberg, who had a 67.

Jarvis closed with a 74 to tie for 18th. Paul, who started one shot behind, shot 76. It was a missed opportunity for Paul, in the mix for the second and final spot for Germany in the Olympics.

DULUTH, Ga. (AP) — Stephen Ames celebrated his 60th birthday with a successful title defense in the Mitsubishi Electric Classic, closing with a 5-under 67 for his eighth PGA Tour Champions victory.

A stroke behind Paul Broadhurst after matching the tournament record Saturday with a 64, Ames had two eagles in the final round. He won by four strokes, finishing at 14-under 202 at TPC Sugarloaf for his record third victory in the event.

Broadhurst, the 58-year-old Englishman coming off a victory last week in the Invited Celebrity Classic, closed with a 72 to tie for second with Doug Barron (69). K.J. Choi (70) and Steven Alker (71) were 9 under.

Ames became the first multiple winner this year on the tour, also taking the Chubb Classic in February. He has six victories in his last 29 starts after winning twice in his first 175 — the first at TPC Sugarloaf in 2017 — on the 50-and-over tour.

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Tim Widing of Sweden won for the second straight week on the Korn Ferry Tour, closing with an 8-under 63 to cap off a week of low scoring with a four-shot victory in the Veritex Bank Championship.

The week began with Frankie Capan III posting a 58 for the third sub-60 round on the Korn Ferry Tour this year. It ended with Widing's worst score of the week a 65 on Saturday.

He finished at 31-under 253 to boost his position atop the Korn Ferry Tour points list as he closes in on a PGA Tour card.

Myles Creighton of Canada closed with a 62 to finish second, followed by Trent Phillips (65). Capan wound up seven shots behind in fourth place. None of the Korn Ferry Tour players who broke 60 this year have gone on to win.

Juliana Hung of Taiwan closed with a 5-under 67 for a nine-shot victory in the IOA Championship on the Epson Tour. ... Rasmus Neergaard-Peterson won his second Challenge Tour of the year, closing with a 5-under 67 for a one-shot victory over Wilco Nienaber in the UAE Challenge in Abu Dhabi. ... Manon De Roey of Belgium capped off a four-shot victory with an even-par 72 in the Investec South African Women's Open on the Ladies European Tour. ... Stuart MacDonald of Canada closed with a 1-under 71 for a two-shot victory over Samuel Anderson in the Diners Club Peru Open on the Tour de Americas. ... Haruka Amamoto closed with a 6-under 66 for a two-shot victory in the Panasonic Open on the Japan LPGA. ... Jungmin Lee won the KLPGA Championship by closing with a 6-under 66 for a four-shot victory on the Korea LPGA.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Captain Cameron Smith, of Ripper GC, celebrates on the 18th hole after his team won the playoff round of LIV Golf Adelaide at Grange Golf Club, Sunday, April 28, 2024, in Adelaide, Australia. (Chris Trotman/LIV Golf via AP)

Stephen Ames shows the trophy to the media after winning the Mitsubishi Classic senior golf tournament at TPC Sugarloaf on Sunday, April 28, 2024, in Duluth, Ga. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Hannah Green hits from the second tee during the fourth round of the LPGA's JM Eagle LA Championship golf tournament at Wilshire Country Club, Sunday, April 28, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, and teammate Shane Lowry, of Ireland, right hold up their trophy after winning the PGA Zurich Classic golf tournament at TPC Louisiana in Avondale, La., Sunday, April 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of U.S. fatal overdoses fell last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Wednesday.

Agency officials noted the data is provisional and could change after more analysis, but that they still expect a drop when the final counts are in. It would be only the second annual decline since the current national drug death epidemic began more than three decades ago.

Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small, and said it should be thought more as part of a leveling off than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed.

“Any decline is encouraging,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. “But I think it's certainly premature to celebrate or to draw any large-scale conclusions about where we may be headed long-term with this crisis.”

It's also too soon to know what spurred the decline, Marshall and other experts said. Explanations could include shifts in the drug supply, expansion of overdose prevention and addiction treatment, and the grim possibility that the epidemic has killed so many that now there are basically fewer people to kill.

CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Deb Houry called the dip “heartening news” and praised efforts to reduce the tally, but she noted “there are still families and friends losing their loved ones to drug overdoses at staggering numbers.”

About 107,500 people died of overdoses in the U.S. last year, including both American citizens and non-citizens who were in the country at the time they died, the CDC estimated. That’s down 3% from 2022, when there were an estimated 111,000 such deaths, the agency said.

The drug overdose epidemic, which has killed more than 1 million people since 1999, has had many ripple effects. For example, a study published last week in JAMA Psychiatry estimated that more than 321,000 U.S. children lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose from 2011 to 2021.

“These children need support,” and are at a higher risk of mental health and drug use disorders themselves, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped lead the study. "It’s not just a loss of a person. It’s also the implications that loss has for the family left behind.”

Prescription painkillers once drove the nation’s overdose epidemic, but they were supplanted years ago by heroin and more recently by illegal fentanyl. The dangerously powerful opioid was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been mixed with other drugs in the illicit drug supply.

For years, fentanyl was frequently injected, but increasingly it's being smoked or mixed into counterfeit pills.

A study published last week found that law enforcement seizures of pills containing fentanyl are rising dramatically, jumping from 44 million in 2022 to more than 115 million last year.

It's possible that the seizures indicate that the overall supply of fentanyl-laced pills is growing fast, not necessarily that police are whittling down the illicit drug supply, said one of the paper's authors, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco.

He noted that the decline in overdoses was not uniform. All but two of the states in the eastern half of the U.S. saw declines, but most western states saw increases. Alaska, Washington, and Oregon each saw 27% increases.

The reason? Many eastern states have been dealing with fentanyl for about a decade, while it's reached western states more recently, Ciccarone said.

Nevertheless, some researchers say there are reasons to be optimistic. It's possible that smoking fentanyl is not as lethal as injecting it, but scientists are still exploring that question.

Meanwhile, more money is becoming available to treat addiction and prevent overdoses, through government funding and also through legal settlements with drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies, Ciccarone noted.

“My hope is 2023 is the beginning of a turning point,” he said.

AP medical writer Carla K. Johnson contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - A container of Narcan, a brand name version of the opioid overdose-reversal drug naloxone, sits on a table following a demonstration at the Health and Human Services Humphrey Building on Friday, Sept. 8, 2023, in Washington. The number of U.S. fatal overdoses fell in 2023 — for only the second time since the current national epidemic of drug deaths began more than three decades ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted the numbers on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)