Friday, September 2, 2011

King scores upset, will face Wozniacki

   Vania King aced one test. Now comes a much bigger one.
   The Sacramento Capital reached the third round of the U.S. Open, equaling her best singles result there, by hammering 29th-seeded Jarmila Gajdosova of Australia 6-2, 6-0 Thursday in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.
   King's reward is a matchup with top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark.
   “I’m American, so I know I’ll get some support out there,” King told reporters. “But she’s No. 1 in the
world, so she will, too.”
   Wozniacki is 2-0 against King, having won 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 (after trailing 4-1 in the third set) last year at Indian Wells and 6-1, 6-0 at the Australian Open in January.
   King, however, has something Wozniacki does not -- a Grand Slam title. King actually has two of them, the 2010 Wimbledon and U.S. Open women's doubles crowns with Yaroslava Shvedova.
   Wozniacki, much maligned for ascending to No. 1 without having won a Slam, was the singles runner-up to Kim Clijsters in the U.S. Open two years ago.
   King led a parade of victorious players with Northern California ties in the U.S. Open.
   Hilary Barte and Mallory Burdette, the NCAA women's doubles champions from Stanford, defeated Alexa Glatch and Jamie Hampton 6-4, 6-4 in a matchup of American wild cards in the first round of women's doubles.
   In mixed doubles, top-seeded Bob Bryan (Stanford) and Liezel Huber, unseeded Scott Lipsky (Stanford) and Lisa Raymond, and unseeded Raquel Kops-Jones (Cal) and Rajeev Ram advanced to the second round.
   The only player with Northern California connections to lose Thursday was Stanford sophomore Nicole Gibbs. She and Lauren Davis, the girls 18 doubles champions in the USTA National Championships last month,  fell to German veterans Julia Goerges and Andrea Petkovic 6-4, 6-1.
   Fusano to coach at UC Davis -- Professional doubles specialist Christina Fusano, a Sacramento native who lives in nearby Plymouth, will become an assistant coach for the UC Davis women's tennis team, head coach Bill Maze announced.
   Fusano, 30, played women's doubles in the U.S. Open twice and at Wimbledon once. Her best year was 2008, when she reached the second round of Wimbledon as a qualifier with Angela Haynes and climbed to a career-high No. 84 in doubles. Fusano won 13 career doubles titles on the ITF Women's Circuit.
  Fusano, a graduate of Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs near Sacramento and 2003 NCAA doubles champion from Cal with Kops-Jones, teamed with former Stanford All-American David Martin to win the inaugural U.S. Open National Playoffs in mixed doubles last week.
   The title gave Fusano and Martin a wild card into the mixed doubles main draw at the U.S. Open. They are scheduled to face Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia and Mark Knowles of the Bahamas today in the first round. Fusano and Knowles were teammates on the Capitals for five matches in July.
  UC Davis will open its fall season Sept. 30 at, ironically, the Cal Invitational.

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