Querrey draws former top-10 player in U.S. Open

Sam Querrey, seeded 29th, will play Janko Tipsarevic
of Serbia in the first round of the U.S. Open.
2014 photo by Paul Bauman 

   Two months ago, Sam Querrey shocked top seed and two-time defending champion Novak Djokovic en route to the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
   It's Querrey's best result in a Grand Slam tournament. The 28-year-old San Francisco native will play another Serb, former top-10 player Janko Tipsarevic, in the first round of the U.S. Open.
   The draw for the year's last Grand Slam tournament was held Friday, and play will begin Monday in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. Querrey, who lives in Santa Monica in the Los Angeles area, is ranked 31st and seeded 29th.
   Tipsarevic, 32, is coming off the title in a $125,000 Challenger in Qingdao, China, as a qualifier. The former world No. 8 returned to competition in April after missing six months since last year's U.S. Open with right knee tendinitis.
  Tipsarevic also came back in April 2015 after sitting out for 18 months because of foot problems, including two surgeries to remove a benign tumor in his left heel.
   Querrey, 6-foot-6 (1.98 meters), is 3-3 against the 5-foot-9 (1.75-meter) Tipsarevic, a U.S. Open quarterfinalist in 2011 and 2012. But their last meeting was in 2013. All of their matches except one have been in the United States; Tipsarevic won in four sets in the first round of the 2012 French Open.
   Mackenzie McDonald, a 21-year-old wild card who grew up in Piedmont in the San Francisco Bay Area, will make his Grand Slam debut against qualifier Jan Satral of the Czech Republic.
   McDonald turned pro in June, forgoing his senior year at UCLA, after becoming the first man in 15 years to sweep the NCAA singles and doubles titles.
   On the women's side in the U.S. Open, ex-Stanford star Nicole Gibbs also will open against a qualifier and against a Serb, Moscow-born Aleksandra Krunic. Both are 23 and undersized, and both have had their best Grand Slam results in the 2014 U.S. Open. Krunic, 5-foot-4 (1.63 meters), reached the fourth round and Gibbs, 5-foot-6 (1.68 meters), the third round.
   CiCi Bellis, a 17-year-old qualifier from Atherton in the Bay Area, will meet Viktorija Golubic of Switzerland.
   Bellis will play in the main draw of a Slam for the first time since 2014, when she stunned 12th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova in the first round before losing to Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan. Cibulkova had reached the Australian Open final that year, losing to since-retired Li Na of China.
   Bellis became the youngest player to win a main-draw match in the U.S. Open since Anna Kournikova, also 15, in 1996.
   Gibbs and the Orange Country Breakers lost to the San Diego Aviators 25-14 on Friday in the World TeamTennis Finals at Forest Hills. After the regular season, Gibbs was named the WTT Female MVP.
   Also playing for Orange County were Scott Lipsky, a 35-year old former Stanford All-American, and Dennis Novikov of Milpitas in the Bay Area.