Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Bryans stunned in first round of U.S. Open

   For the first time in 10 years, Bob and Mike Bryan lost in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament.
   The top seeds and defending champions fell to 6-foot-10 Ivo Karlovic of Croatia and Frank Moser of Germany 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 Wednesday at the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.
   The Bryan twins, the 1998 NCAA men's doubles champions as Stanford sophomores, had won the Australian Open and Wimbledon and reached the semifinals of the French Open this year. They hadn't lost in the opening round of a Grand Slam since the 2001 Australian Open.
   Meanwhile, neither Karlovic nor Moser had reached the second round of a Grand Slam in men's doubles.
   Also falling in the first round of men's doubles were 16th-seeded Scott Lipsky of Huntington Beach and Rajeev Ram of Carmel, Ind., and Folsom resident Dmitry Tursunov and Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov.
   Lipsky, another former Stanford All-American, and Ram, the singles runner-up in the 2006 Sacramento Challenger, lost to Germans Michael Kohlmann and Alexander Waske 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5). Lipsky, who grew up in Merrick, N.Y., near the site of the tournament, fell to 0-5 in U.S. Open men's doubles.
   Dimitrov and Tursunov lost to eighth-seeded Eric Butorac of Rochester, Minn., and Jean-Julien Rojer of Netherlands Antilles 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-0. Butorac played for the Sacramento Capitals in 2008. 
   Third-seeded Vania King, a current member of the Capitals who grew up in Long Beach, and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan opened the defense of their women's doubles title with a 6-1, 6-2 victory over Czechs Petra Cetkovska and Renata Voracova.    
   Raquel Kops-Jones, the 2003 NCAA women's doubles champion from Cal, and Abigail Spears of Valley Center (north of San Diego) fell to fourth-seeded Liezel Huber of Houston and Lisa Raymond of Wayne, Pa., 6-2, 6-2.

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