Polish qualifier shocks Murray in Paris

   Jerzy Janowicz fell to the court, held his head in his hands and wept as if he had just won Wimbledon.
   The 21-year-old Polish qualifier actually had saved a match point and shocked third-ranked Andy Murray, this year's U.S. Open and Olympic champion, 5-7, 7-6 (4), 6-2 Thursday in the third round of the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.
   "This was the most unbelievable day in my life," the 6-foot-8 Janowicz told reporters. "I beat Olympic champion, U.S. Open champion. Unbelievable feeling for me. Still, I have feeling like in few minutes I'm going to wake up and it's going to be everything gone.
   "I don't know actually what I supposed to say because it's really hard to describe this feeling. It's not easy for me to talk about this week, because I had really tough moments in my life. This is like a movie for me."
   Janowicz's parents, former professional volleyball players, sold shops and apartments they owned to help his career.
   "I'm from Poland, and I know it's not easy to become professional tennis player," he said. "Actually, I have problem with sponsors. I was fighting my whole life with money, so this week is really important for me to get some sponsors, to get some help."
   Janowicz is ranked 69th after beginning the year at No. 221. He has beaten three top-20 players in the BNP Paribas Masters -- No. 19 Philipp Kohlschreiber, No. 15 Marin Cilic and No. 3 Murray -- and will meet No. 9 Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia in today's quarterfinals. The match will begin at about 4 p.m. Paris time (8 a.m. California time, Tennis Channel).
   Murray, 25, won the first two of his 24 career singles titles at the 2006 and 2007 SAP Open in San Jose. His loss in Paris leaves the tournament with none of the Big Four.
   No. 1 Roger Federer withdrew to rest for next week's ATP World Tour Finals in London. No. 2 Novak Djokovic fell to Sam Querrey on Wednesday, and No. 4 Rafael Nadal has been out with knee tendinitis since losing in the second round of Wimbledon to Lukas Rosol.
   Querrey, a 25-year-old San Francisco native and part-time member of the Sacramento Capitals of World TeamTennis this year, beat 14th-seeded Milos Raonic 6-3, 7-6 (1). Raonic, 21, will seek his third straight SAP Open singles crown in February, when the tournament will be held for the 125th and last time before moving to Rio de Janeiro.
   Querrey will face Michael Llodra, a 32-year-old French wild card, today at about 9:30 p.m. Paris time (1:30 p.m. California time). Lodra upset seventh-seeded Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 U.S. Open champion coming off titles in Vienna and Basel in the previous two weeks, 6-4, 6-3.
   Del Potro toppled Federer, the hometown favorite, in the Basel final to snap a seven-match losing streak to the Swiss star. Del Potro also victimized Federer for his only Grand Slam title.
   In doubles, Paul Hanley and Wimbledon champion Jonathan Marray surprised top-ranked Bob and Mike Bryan, former NCAA champions from Stanford, 6-4, 6-7 (2), 10-5 tiebreak to reach the quarterfinals. The 34-year-old Bryan twins won the Paris title in 2005 and 2007.
   Capitals -- Kolleen McNamee has been named the general manager of the Capitals, the team announced.
   McNamee, formerly the athletic director at St. Francis High School in Sacramento, has been involved in sports as a player, coach or adminstrator for 35 years. She played soccer at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and was inducted in the school's Hall of Fame in 2004.
   McNamee replaces Jayna Osborne, the wife of 74-year-old Capitals co-owner Ramey Osborne. Jayna took over in June after 28-year-old Matt McEvoy left to run the Frys.com Open, a PGA Tour event in the Silicon Valley.
   The Capitals have won a record six WTT titles, most recently in 2007. They lost to the Washington Kastles in this year's WTT Finals, 20-19.

Knowles ends year with another first-round loss

   Mark Knowles is staggering toward the finish line of his career.
   The 40-year-old doubles specialist and longtime Sacramento Capital ended his year Tuesday with his sixth first-round loss in his last seven tournaments.
   Knowles and Belgium's Xavier Malisse, a comparative youngster at 31, fell to French wild cards Julien Benneteau and Nicolas Mahut 6-3, 6-3 at the $3.78 million BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.
   Knowles, a Bahamas native, will miss the ATP World Tour Finals for the second consecutive year after qualifying for the season-culminating tournament for eight seasons in a row and winning the 2007 title with Daniel Nestor. 
   "Done for the year and happy the season is over!" Knowles, who has won three World TeamTennis Male MVP awards in his 10 seasons with the Capitals, wrote on his Facebook page.  
   Knowles, who reached No. 1 in the world in doubles in 2002 and 2004, has plunged from No. 5 at the end of 2009 to No. 28 at the conclusion of last year to No. 43.
   He won one title this year, at Los Angeles in July with Malisse in their first tournament together, to give him 54 for his career (three in Grand Slams). That ranks fourth among active players behind Mike Bryan (77), Bob Bryan (75) and Nestor (74) and tied for 16th in the Open Era (since 1968).
   The Los Angeles title came at UCLA, where Knowles starred from 1990 to 1992.
   Knowles, who's married with three young children, hopes to play in the 2012 Olympics in London next summer. His mother is British, and he carries a British passport. As if that's not enough motivation for Knowles, the Olympic tennis event will be held at Wimbledon.
   In the first round of singles in Paris, qualifier Donald Young lost to Juan Monaco of Argentina 6-4, 6-2. Young won the 2008 Sacramento Challenger.
   Schnack qualifies -- Fourth-seeded Yasmin Schnack of Elk Grove, a Sacramento suburb, defeated seventh-seeded Shelby Rogers of Charleston, S.C., 4-6, 6-1, 6-0 in the final round of qualifying for the $75,000 Goldwater Women's Tennis Classic in Phoenix.
   Rogers, 19, won last year's USTA girls 18 national hardcourt title.
   Schnack, a Capitals rookie in July, is scheduled to meet unseeded Kurumi Nara of Japan on Wednesday in the first round of the main draw. The winner will face Portugal's Michelle Larcher De Brito, who played on the Capitals' 2007 WTT championship team, in the second round. Larcher De Brito upset top-seeded Irina Falconi of Atlanta 6-2, 4-6, 6-0.
   The singles draw features five current or former Capitals: Schnack, Larcher De Brito, sixth-seeded Coco Vandeweghe (2009), Tammy Hendler (2008) and Olga Puchkova (two matches in 2008).
    Niland advances -- Ireland's Conor Niland, a former Cal All-American, defeated Andrea Arnaboldi of Italy 6-3, 7-5 in the first round of a $58,794 Challenger in Loughborough, England.
   Niland, the 2006 Pacific-10 Conference Player of the Year, is scheduled to face second-seeded Tobias Kamke of Germany on Wednesday in the second round. Kamke won last year's Tiburon Challenger.         

Tursunov falls, avoids Federer matchup

   At least he won't have to play Roger Federer.
   Unseeded Dmitry Tursunov, a longtime Sacramento-area resident, lost to wild card Adrian Mannarino of France 6-2, 6-2 Monday in the first round of the $3.78 BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.
   Mannarino will face the third-seeded Federer, who won his hometown tournament in Basel, Switzerland, for the fifth time last week and received a first-round bye in Paris. Federer, 30, has never won the tournament.
   Tursunov, a 28-year-old Moscow native, is 0-3 against Federer. In their last meeting, the Swiss maestro won 6-4, 6-2 in the first round of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
   The 40th-ranked Tursunov played in the prestigious Paris tournament for the first time since 2008. After undergoing three operations on his left ankle or foot between April 2009 and February 2010, he was not ranked high enough to play in the main draw there the past two years.
   Tursunov's first-round opponent the last time he played in the Paris indoors? Mannarino. Tursunov won that encounter 6-3, 6-2 before retiring at 2-6, 3-4 against Novak Djokovic, then ranked third in the world, in the second round.
   Also Monday, qualifier Santiago Giraldo, a Colombian who won the 2009 Sacramento Challenger, lost to Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 in the first round.
   Milos Raonic, the reigning champion of the SAP Open in San Jose, and 2009 SAP Open winner Radek Stepanek also fell in the opening round.
   Raonic, a 20-year-old Canadian, lost to veteran Julien Benneteau of France 6-7 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-4, and Stepanek, a 32-year-old Czech, was eliminated by Florian Mayer of Germany 7-5, 6-3.
   Schnack coasts -- Fourth-seeded Yasmin Schnack, a resident of Elk Grove in the Sacramento area, dispatched Denise Starr, 16, of Staten Island, N.Y., 6-2, 6-0 in the second round of qualifying for the $75,000 Goldwater Women's Tennis Classic in Phoenix.
    Schnack, a 23-year-old UCLA graduate, is scheduled to meet seventh-seeded Shelby Rogers, last year's USTA girls 18 national champion from Charleston, S.C., today for a berth in the main draw.
   New rankings -- Following are this week's world rankings of professional players with Northern California ties (change from last week in parentheses):

Men

   Bob Bryan, 1998 NCAA doubles champion from Stanford -- No. 1 in doubles (no change), unranked in singles.
   Mike Bryan, 1998 NCAA doubles champion from Stanford -- No. 1 in doubles (no change), unranked in singles.
  John Paul Fruttero, Cal All-American in 2001 and 2002 -- Career-high No. 123 in doubles (+8), 1,229 in singles (no change).
  Kiryl Harbatsiuk, three-time Big Sky Conference MVP (2009-11) at Sacramento State -- No. 760 in singles (+3, No. 1,247 in doubles (no change).
   Mark Knowles, Sacramento Capitals of World TeamTennis (2001-07, 2009-11) -- No. 43 in doubles (no change), unranked in singles.
   Scott Lipsky, 2002 NCAA doubles runner-up from Stanford -- No. 28 in doubles (-2), unranked in singles.
   David Martin, 2002 NCAA doubles runner-up from Stanford -- No. 101 in doubles (+3), No. 661 in singles (+9).
    Conor Niland, 2006 Pacific-10 Conference Player of the Year and two-time All-American at Cal -- No. 195 in singles (-1), unranked in doubles.
   Sam Querrey, San Francisco native -- No. 97 in singles (+19), No. 36 in doubles (-3).
   Dmitry Tursunov, Folsom resident -- No. 40 in singles (-1), No. 238 in doubles (-2).
   Dusan Vemic, Capitals (2010-11) -- No. 497 in doubles (-1), No. 1,514 in singles (+5).
   Jimmy Wang, Folsom resident -- No. 288 in singles (-6), No. 552 in doubles (-2).

Women

   Vania King, Capitals (2010-11) -- No. 6 in doubles (no change), No. 76 in singles (-1).
   Raquel Kops-Jones, 2003 NCAA doubles champion from Cal -- No. 37 in doubles (no change), No. 716 in singles (+2).
   Maria Sanchez, Modesto resident -- No. 339 in doubles (career high, +2), No. 687 in singles (career high, +1).

   Yasmin Schnack, Elk Grove resident, Sacramento Capitals of World TeamTennis (2011) -- No. 214 in doubles (-1), No. 400 in singles (+3).