BRIEFLY : WOODS, CAUGHT BETWEEN ROCK AND GOLF BALL, SUFFERS INJURY.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Tiger Woods hit through a baseball-sized rock and suffered a stinger Thursday in the Tour Championship in Houston, which a physical therapist said would cause stiffness in his neck through the weekend.

Woods said it would not force him to withdraw.

``No worries,'' the world's No. 1 player said. ``I'll be all right.''

Woods, trailing by one stroke with five holes left in the 27-hole round, hit a tee shot on No. 15 that came to rest next to a tree with a big rock right in front of the ball.

Woods said moving the rock would have caused the ball to move, a one-stroke penalty.

``If I took two club lengths (a one-stroke penalty), I would still be in the rough, the tree in my line. A bogey would be a good number,'' he said. ``If I could somehow get the ball back out in the fairway . . . which is what I tried to do.''

Smashing through the rock with a wedge, the chain-reaction caused the ball to advance sideways about 25 yards, still in the rough. Woods hit his third shot to about 20 feet and two-putted for par.

Woods was at 6-under 100 after the 27 holes, one stroke back of Davis Love III as the 29 players in the lucrative Tour Championship take today off to fly to Florida for the funeral of Payne Stewart before completing 27 holes Saturday and 18 more Sunday.

TENNIS: With Steffi Graf watching, Andre Agassi reached the quarterfinals of the $2.45 million Eurocard Open in Stuttgart, Germany with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Sjeng Schalken.

Graf, whose romance with Agassi became known just after he won the U.S. Open last month, is accompanying him to a tournament for the first time. She has been watching his matches from the players' box.

In her first tournament since pulling out of the U.S. Oepn with a stress fracture in her right foot, Anna Kournikova lost a roller-coaster match to Irina Spirlea in the $520,000 Generali Ladies tournament in Linz, Austria. Spirlea survived for a 6-0, 0-6, 6-1 win over the 13th-ranked player in the world.

BASKETBALL: University of Oregon men's basketball coach Ernie Kent signed a new four-year contract that could pay him more than $420,000 a year.

Isaac Hawkins, who averaged 12.7 points and 8.9 rebounds a game last season for Pittsburgh, will miss six weeks and the Panthers' season opener because of a broken bone in his right leg.

YACHTING: With its mast damaged in a morning race, AmericaOne struggled with only a headsail raised against Young America before finally withdrawing. The win put Young America behind Italy's Prada in the first round of the challenger races off Auckland, New Zealand, for sailing's America's Cup.

Prada finished the round-robin with a 10-0 record. AmericaOne lost only to Young America and Prada, while Young America was defeated by Prada and Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes.

The 11 syndicates from seven countries will begin reconfiguring their boats for the second round-robin in the regatta to decide who will take on defender New Zealand for the America's Cup next year.

WOMEN'S BASKETBALL: Former NBA player T.R. Dunn, an assistant coach with the WNBA's Charlotte Sting since July, has been promoted to head coach.