Weekend recap: Canada's Nick Taylor, Felix Auger-Aliassime win trophies

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What looked like a pretty quiet weekend in the Olympic sports realm turned out to be quite exciting as a pair of Canada's Summer Olympians won individual tournaments while American ski-racing star Lindsey Vonn ramped up her comeback. Also, Olympic women's hockey prospect Chloe Primerano helped Canada to a junior world title.

Let's get you caught up on all that.

Nick Taylor won in dramatic fashion again.

In 2023, Taylor authored one of the greatest moments in our country's golf history when he sank a 72-foot eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole to become the first Canadian man to win the Canadian Open in 69 years. Last February, he rallied from three shots down with four holes left to steal the Phoenix Open with an 11-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole.

Yesterday, Taylor delivered in the clutch again at the Sony Open in Hawaii. After chipping in from 60 feet for eagle on the 18th hole to get into another playoff, he made a 10-footer for birdie to stay alive and then hit a beautiful wedge to set up another birdie to defeat Chile's Nico Echavarria for the win. 

Taylor's latest playoff victory earned him $1.6 million US of the $8.7M purse along with entries to the Masters and all of the PGA Tour's $20M signature events. He was in danger of missing out because of a frustrating dip following his Phoenix Open win last winter. Taylor went the rest of the year without a solo top-10 finish, missed the cut in all four majors, tied for 30th at the Paris Olympics and was left off Canadian captain Mike Weir's International team for the Presidents Cup in Montreal. "It was a tough six, seven months," Taylor said, but "I just feel like I can rise to the occasion."

Felix Auger-Aliassime rolled into the Australian Open with a trophy.

Canada's top singles tennis player won the warmup Adelaide International on Saturday, defeating American Sebastian Korda in the final for his sixth ATP Tour singles title and first on outdoor hard courts. Felix then skipped over to the Aussie Open in Melbourne, where he's seeded 29th in the men's draw, and beat Germany's Jan-Lennard Struff 6-3, 6-0, 4-6, 6-1 in the first round today. He'll face Spain's Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the second round.

Canada's top women's singles player, Leylah Fernandez, also won her opening-round match at the Aussie Open. The No. 30 seed faces Spain's Cristina Bucsa in the second round.

Three other Canadian singles players were still preparing for their first-round matches. Gabriel Diallo, ranked 86th in the world, makes his Australian Open main-draw debut tonight against Italy's Luca Nardi while 98th-ranked Rebecca Marino meets Britain's Katie Boulte. 56th-ranked Denis Shapovalov plays Spain's Roberto Bautista Agut early Tuesday.

The No. 2-seeded women's doubles team of Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand's Erin Routliffe will face Americans Danielle Collins and Desirae Krawczyk in their opening round. Dabrowski won Olympic mixed doubles bronze with Auger-Aliassime and captured the lucrative WTA Finals title with Routliffe before revealing near the end of the year that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer back in the spring.

Chloe Primerano helped Canada to a junior hockey world title.

Women's hockey does not have a direct equivalent to the men's world juniors, the wildly popular annual Christmastime tournament for under-20 players. But the women's under-18 world championship is the rough equivalent, and Canada won it with a 3-0 victory over the defending-champion United States on Sunday in Finland.

Marilou Grenier made 14 saves for the shutout, and Dorothy Copetti and Stryker Zablocki sealed the gold with third-period goals after Caileigh Tiller opened the scoring in the first. Canada dominated the shot count 30-14.

Zablocki led all scorers in goals (8) and points (12) in six games and was voted to the tournament all-star team at forward. But the MVP went to Slovakian phenom Nela Lopusanova, whose team lost 9-1 to the U.S. in the quarterfinals. The 16-year-old had five goals and 11 points in five games and was involved in all but three of her team's goals. Lopusanova was also voted MVP in 2023, when she led the tournament in scoring as a 14-year-old. Now attending high school near Rochester, N.Y., she's apparently a great flag-football player too. 

Joining Lopusanova and Zablocki on the all-star team was Primerano, who added the best defender award after leading all blue-liners with four goals and 10 points. Primerano was the tournament MVP last year, when Canada took bronze, and in November the University of Minnesota freshman made her senior national team debut as a 17-year-old. Now 18, she could be on Canada's blue-line at the Olympics next year.

In other women's hockey news, Saturday's PWHL game between Montreal and Minnesota at the Colorado Avalanche's arena drew 14,018 fans to set a new U.S. attendance record. 

In the NHL, Alex Ovechkin scored in Washington's 4-1 win over Nashville on Saturday to become just the second player (after Gordie Howe) to reach 20 goals in 20 consecutive seasons. Ovechkin is 22 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky's all-time record of 894.

Lindsey Vonn is back.

Before Christmas, the American alpine skiing star launched her World Cup comeback at age 40 with a cautious 14th-place in a super-G in Switzerland. But this weekend in Austria was when the old Lindsey Vonn truly returned.

Competing in a World Cup downhill (her best discipline) for the first time in six years, Vonn placed sixth on Saturday before adding a fourth-place finish in Sunday's super-G. Though she fell short of the podium, these are pretty exciting results for anyone hoping to see the 2010 Olympic downhill champ make another run at the podium next year in Italy.

The lone Canadian competing against Vonn over the weekend was Val Grenier. She finished 43rd in the downhill and DNF'd in the super-G.

In Para World Cup giant slalom action in Switzerland, Canada's Kalle Ericsson and his guide Sierra Smith won one of the two men's vision-impaired races and took silver in the other. Alexis Guimond earned silver in both men's standing events, while Michaela Gosselin grabbed a silver and a bronze in the women's standing category.