SHANGHAI -- Hideki Matsuyama arrived at the HSBC Champions as the first Japanese player in nearly two decades to reach the top 10 in the world ranking. His 19 birdies over 36 holes in biting chill and swirling wind helped explain how he got there.Even as the weather shifted dramatically Friday at Sheshan International, Matsuyama kept piling up the birdies. One last birdie on the par-5 18th gave him a 7-under 65 and a three-shot lead going into the weekend of the final World Golf Championships event of the year.He is playing very well, said Rory McIlroy, who was six shots behind. And hell be tough to catch.Matsuyama was at 13-under 131 and led by three shots over defending champion Russell Knox (68) and Bill Haas (67). He shouldnt have been surprised by the result because it was his eighth consecutive score in the 60s dating to the second round of the Tour Championship.What made this one so satisfying were the conditions.Rain the last two days gave way to a strong wind when Matsuyama was warming up, and the wind made the sharp dip of temperatures into the 50s feel even worse.I thought maybe just a couple under par would be a good score, Matsuyama said. So Im really happy with how it ended up today. It was windy and cold. The ball, its hard to control. It was tough out there today.It was plenty tough for Adam Scott, who had a pair of double bogeys on the par 5s on his way to an 80. Kevin Kisner, a runner-up at the HSBC Champions last year, made a 9 on the final hole for an 80.Fifteen players still managed to break 70 because of the rain-softened greens, and while Matsuyamas 65 was the best score of the second round, making it even more impressive was that he also had two bogeys. On Thursday, he had 10 birdies against four bogeys.Nineteen birdies ... thats really, really strong, Knox said.Matsuyama already is having his biggest year since he began playing regularly round the world in 2014. He overcame a two-shot deficit over the last two holes and beat Rickie Fowler in the Phoenix Open. He had another top 10 in the Masters. And while he went into a summer lull of poor putting -- Matsuyama missed the cut in the U.S. Open and British Open -- the 24-year-old returned to form at the PGA Championship with his best finish in a major (tie for fourth) and has been steady ever since.Two weeks ago, he won the Japan Open for his ninth victory worldwide. He was runner-up to Justin Thomas in Malaysia last week, pushing his PGA Tour earnings for the year to over $4.6 million and moving him to No. 10.The last Japanese player in the top 10 was Jumbo Ozaki during the week of the 1998 Masters.A better attitude has helped this week, too. Matsuyama doesnt have much of a record in the World Golf Championships, with his only top 10 at the Dell Match Play a year ago in San Francisco when he reached the quarterfinals, only to be blown out by McIlroy.In three previous appearances at the HSBC Champions, he withdrew twice and tied for 41st.I havent really played well here before, he said. So before coming here, I was a little bit nervous again thinking, `Well, maybe its not going to be a good week for me. But then I decided, `Lets just have fun this week. Its made a difference.It didnt look like much fun on Friday, particularly the final hour when the temperature dropped and a light rain fell.This felt like a cold day at Pebble Beach, said Daniel Berger, who had a 70 and was in the group five shots behind.McIlroy thrived, too, and at least got back into the mix going into the weekend at Sheshan. He figured a 66 would do the trick, and it might have felt even better if Matsuyama had not gone one better in the second round.McIlroys only blemish came at the reachable par-4 16th, when his tee shot was just right of the green and in a hazard. He found the ball in the bushes and thought for the longest time about playing it, constantly rehearsing a swing to see if the branches would allow him to make contact.A wiser head (and advice from his caddie) prevailed, McIlroy took a penalty drop and got out with a bogey. He made up for it with a birdie on the final hole for a 66 that at least has him range, though much depends on Matsuyama.Theres definitely some rust in the 71 yesterday. I feel like Ive shaken most of that off, McIlroy said. It should be a good weekend. Im just happy to be in the mix. Wholesale Soccer Jerseys . The veteran safety was a starter for the Bengals from 2008-2012. 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LOS ANGELES -- Carmelo Anthony praised Michael Jordan for speaking out Monday on the countrys growing racial and social unrest while also saying it was about time Jordan stepped up and took a stance and put his money where his mouth is at with two grants of $1 million each to two organizations working to build trust between the police and their communities.I thought it was brilliant and about time that he stepped up and said what he said, Anthony said later Monday after a meeting with community leaders in Los Angeles. At the end of the day, amongst us, he is our face. He is an African-American and a very powerful African-American, so for him to step up in the midst of these times right now, it was very big on his behalf. Its not always about the money, but for him to step up and put his money where his mouth is at, the timing was perfect.On Monday, Anthony, along with Tamika Catchings and other members of USA Basketball mens and womens national teams, met with community leaders at the Challengers Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles for two hours in what was billed as Leadership Together: A Conversation with Our Sons & Daughters. About 200 people were in attendance, including Deputy Chief William Scott of the Los Angeles Police Department; Calvin Lyons, the president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Los Angeles; and Charisse Bremond-Weaver, the president of the Brotherhood Crusade.We had a bunch of youth and a bunch of police officers and bunch of community leaders of all races and ethnicities, and it was an open forum and an open dialogue and an honest conversation, Anthony said. We came together as one big group first and we discussed some things, and then we broke down into eight small groups, and each group had athletes, officers and community leaders. We just talked about the issues that are going on out there today, and we talked about solutions. Now, there were a lot of solutions going on out there today, but we know that nothing is going to happen overnight. But what we wanted to do was create something that we can start right now and continue when we leave here.Anthonys vision for Mondays meeting in Los Angeles -- as well as opening the ESPYS earlier this month with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul, each of them urging their fellow athletes to be active socially -- came to him in the middle of the night as he watched racial and social unrest unfolding each day on television.It started 3 oclock in the morning one night after watching CNN all day and watching all the tragedies that were happening back to back to back, Anthony said. It tookk me a while to get to that point because a lot of times when things happen like that, everybody quickly jumps on social media and everybody has an opinion.dddddddddddd Nobody knows the facts and nobody knows whats going on. Were quick to say Black Lives Matter without knowing both sides of the story. So I wanted to take my time.I wasnt going to say anything at first because I like to stay behind the scenes. I went to bed and I woke up in the middle of the night and I just started typing, and as I was typing, I spoke from the heart. The first thing that came to my mind was I have to get my fellow athletes to step up and use their voice and use their platform in the best way that they can. It went from an Instagram post to me getting [James, Wade and Paul] to open up the ESPYS, which was a big platform for us. ... Were just going to keep the conversation going.On Saturday, the WNBA withdrew fines for teams and players who wore warm-up shirts in a show of support for citizens and police involved in recent shootings. Catchings, who is retiring at the end of the season and is the president of the players union, said the issues affecting men today also affect women, and stressed that it was important for all sides in the discussion to be educated.Weve been able to stand up the last couple of weeks in what weve done with wearing the black shirts and being able to have a voice and use our platform, Catchings said. Coming here and listening to the young men and women, were all struggling and were all hurting and feeling disrespected to a certain extent, but what comes out of today is being educated and being able to hear stories from the cop side and from the youth side.Anthonys goal is that Mondays conversation will be the first of several that take place across the country over the next year with not only NBA and WNBA players but athletes in all sports and community leaders in their respective cities.There were some very, very powerful messages that were talked about amongst not just us as athletes, but the youth, he said. The youth really, really spoke out today about how they feel about their community and how they feel about police officers and how they feel about relationships and how we can mend these relationships. The police spoke, youth spoke and athletes spoke, and we really got a lot of messages out of today, so hopefully we can continue this dialogue, and I think we created something today that will continue on into the future. ' ' '