Querrey heads field for Sacramento Challenger

Sam Querrey waves to the sparse crowd after
his late-night win in the first round at Indian
Wells in March. Photo by Paul Bauman

   Sam Querrey, ranked 52nd in the world and fourth in the United States, is scheduled to make his first Challenger appearance in more than two years later this month in Sacramento.
   The 26-year-old San Francisco native heads the entry list for the $100,000 Sacramento Pro Circuit Challenger, Sept. 29 to Oct. 5 at the Natomas Racquet Club. The only other top-100 player in the field is No. 76 Adrian Mannarino of France.
   Other entrants include:
   --Marcos Baghdatis, the 2006 Australian Open runner-up from Cyprus.
   --Robby Ginepri, the only active U.S. man to have reached a Grand Slam singles semifinal (2005 U.S. Open).
   --Tim Smyczek, last year's Sacramento Challenger runner-up from Tampa, Fla.
   --Bradley Klahn, the 2010 NCAA champion as a Stanford sophomore.
   --Ryan Harrison, who reached the top 50 in the world two years ago at age 20.
   --Former Sacramento Challenger champions Wayne Odesnik (2007) of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and John Millman (2010) of Australia.
   --Peter Polansky, last year's Tiburon Challenger champion from Canada.
   All except Querrey and Mannarino also are scheduled to play in the $50,000 Napa Valley Challenger, Monday through Sept. 28 at the Napa Valley Country Club.
   Donald Young, last year's Napa and Sacramento champion now ranked No. 50, is not entered in either tournament.
   The entry list for the $100,000 First Republic Bank Tiburon Challenger, Oct. 6-12 at the Tiburon Peninsula Club, has not been released.
   Querrey, 6-foot-6 (1.98 meters), and Mannarino, a 26-year-old left-hander, have played well recently. Both reached the third round of the U.S. Open, and while Querrey was winning both of his Davis Cup singles matches against Slovakia in Chicago last week, Mannarino was winning the $75,000 Istanbul Challenger on hardcourts.
   Querrey climbed to a career-high No. 17 in January 2011 but has battled injuries since then. Although he grew up in Las Vegas and the Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks, he is very familiar with Northern California.
   He has played in the Sacramento Challenger three times, reaching the semifinals in October 2011 before losing to eventual champion Ivo Karlovic, a 6-foot-11 (2.11-meter) Croat, 7-6 (6), 3-6, 6-4.
   In addition, Querrey played part-time for the Sacramento Capitals in 2012 and 2013 before the longest-running franchise in World TeamTennis at 28 years announced it was moving to Las Vegas. Less than three weeks later, team owner Deepal Wannakuwatte was charged with orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme related to his medical supply business, and the franchise disbanded without playing a match as the Las Vegas Neon.  
   Querrey played annually in the SAP Open in San Jose on the ATP World Tour, advancing to the singles semifinals in 2010 and 2013 and winning the doubles title in 2010 with Mardy Fish. The tournament was replaced on the calendar by Rio de Janeiro beginning last February after 125 years in Northern California.
   Querrey made his professional debut at 18 in Yuba City, a one-hour drive north of Sacramento. He won the 2006 Challenger, defeating Sam Warburg of Sacramento in the final.
   The Yuba City Challenger was last held in June 2009, and Warburg retired that October at age 26.

Schnack gives up promising pro career

Yasmin Schnack, shown in last summer's $50,000 FSP Gold River
Women's Challenger in the Sacramento area, lost in the second
round of singles but won the doubles title with Sacramento
Capitals teammate Asia Muhammad. Photo by Paul Bauman

   Yasmin Schnack was on her way in professional tennis.
   After 2 1/2 years on the circuit, the former UCLA All-American was headed toward the top 100 in the world in doubles. She played doubles at Wimbledon with her best friend, Vania King, and helped her hometown Sacramento Capitals come within two points of winning the World TeamTennis title.
   King, a two-time Grand Slam women's doubles champion with career highs of No. 3 in doubles and No. 50 in singles, said Monday that Schnack "is more talented than I am."
   None of it was enough. Weighed down by loneliness, financial considerations and family issues, Schnack retired from pro tennis last November at age 24.
   "I'd be going out (on the minor-league tour) for three, four, five weeks at a time, and I'd be meeting up with friends and players at tournaments, but as far as having someone there with me, my parents weren't there, I didn't have a trainer, I didn't have a coach or hitting partner," Schnack said earlier this month in Sacramento during the $2,000 Rio Del Oro Open, in which she won a three-team round robin in women's doubles with roommate and former Sacramento State standout Clarisse Baca. "After a while, it took a toll on me. I felt burned out and kind of lost that passion and competitiveness to be out there.
   "That was a big factor, and financially it's difficult. Your income is based solely on how you're doing. Some weeks I had great tournaments, and then for a few weeks there was nothing. You're paying for all your expenses -- air fare, hotel, food, equipment, stringing ... Everything just kind of adds up."
   Schnack also feels she needs to be at home.
   "My dad's 82, and his health is deteriorating, so my mom's at home taking care of him," said Schnack, whose Filipina mother, Candida, is almost 30 years younger than her father. "My sister is mentally handicapped, so my mom is really busy taking care of the family. ... My family is so important to me."
   Schnack's father, a retired physician named William, has Parkinson's disease.
   "It's still in the early stages, but I can really see differences with his health," she said. "Every minute I can be at home around him, it makes me feel better, and I know he appreciates me being at home and spending time with him."  
   Schnack, 5-foot-10 (1.78 meters), reached career highs of No. 140 in doubles and No. 371 in singles. She won 11 doubles titles and two singles crowns in tennis' minor leagues.
   In Schnack's Wimbledon main-draw debut last summer, she and King lost to eighth-seeded Iveta Benesova and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, both of the Czech Republic, 6-4, 6-1 in the first round. King won the 2010 Wimbledon and U.S. Open women's doubles titles with Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan.
   Schnack played full-time for the Capitals the last two years, along with King for 10 of 14 regular-season matches in 2011 and two during last year's march to the WTT Finals.
   King, also 24, has known Schnack since they were juniors.
   "I've always thought she had amazing potential from when we were little," the 5-foot-5 (1.65-meter) King said by telephone. "She never had proper coaching or support. She's more talented than I am.
   "She has the potential to be top 100 in singles and doubles, but things don't always work out the way everyone expects. 'Potential' is a very vague word. A lot of other things come into it."
   But gifted?
   "She has very clean strokes," King said. "She has a great body, great physical ability and an all-court game. She has all the tools. The game came naturally to her."
   Maria Sanchez -- a 23-year-old rising pro from Modesto, 77 miles (124 kilometers) south of Sacramento -- has known Schnack since they were in high school. They were cross-town rivals in college -- Sanchez was an All-American at USC -- and played doubles with and against each other in the pros.
   "She's a great player, so it's sad to see her go, and she's also a good friend of mine," Sanchez said last week after winning her singles main-draw debut in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. "But you have to do what makes you happy."
   Even if you're approaching the top 100 in doubles.
   "Everyone was saying, 'Your ranking is steadily going up. Why are you stopping?' " Schnack said. "I guess I really didn't think about my ranking so much as how I was feeling. Did I feel good on the court? Was I having fun? Was I enjoying it? Was I competing?
   "Most of the time, I was just fighting myself. Tennis is so mental. You're putting yourself at a disadvantage if you're fighting yourself and not playing against your opponent."
   Schnack's case is reminiscent of Sam Warburg's. Also citing loneliness and financial struggles, the Sacramento product retired from professional tennis at 26 in 2009 after 4 1/2 years on the circuit.
   Warburg approached the top 100 not only in doubles with a career high of No. 117, but in singles, peaking at No. 132. He played five seasons for the Capitals, helping them win the last of their record six WTT titles in 2007.
   Both Warburg and Schnack won NCAA titles at Pacific-10 Conference schools and graduated. Warburg captured the 2004 doubles title with Stanford teammate KC Corkery, and Schnack helped UCLA earn its only women's team title, in 2008. Warburg graduated in communications, Schnack in sociology.
   Warburg, 29, works as a venture capitalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Schnack plans to attend nursing school in the fall or next January.
   The biggest difference between Warburg and Schnack, who do not know each other well, is that Warburg vowed never to return to pro tennis. Schnack already is having second thoughts.
   "I'm sad to be gone from it," she admitted. "I really do miss it, which is why I've been playing these little opens, so I still can use the competitiveness that I have in me and go out and play and have fun."
   Schnack left the door open to returning to the tour.
   "I'm young enough and still have the time to go out and give it a little while, but I'm happy with where things are in my life, and I like the direction it's heading," she said. "I wonder if I do go back and play if it's going to be an emotional roller coaster again. Of course I'll have the highs and feel great and love that I'm back playing, but then there are going to be the lows, and I'll think, Why am I wasting my time?
   "You know that cycle. I've gone through that with tennis my entire life. I think it's nice to have consistency and routine and not this up-and-down struggle."
   BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells -- Kevin Anderson and Mardy Fish, two part-time Capitals in 2012 who are coming back from health problems, won Monday.
   Anderson, playing in his second tournament after undergoing right elbow surgery, routed 31-year-old Jarkko Nieminen of Finland 6-3, 6-1 in the third round. Anderson, a 6-foot-8 (2.03-meter) right-hander from South Africa, will face 13th-seeded Gilles Simon of France on Wednesday.  
   Fish is competing in his first tournament in six months after battling an irregular heartbeat. The wild-card team of Fish and fellow American James Blake reached the doubles quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Feliciano Lopez of Spain and Milos Raonic of Canada.
   Fish, seeded 32nd in singles, will meet eighth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France today in the third round.
   In a second-round doubles match consisting of the entire U.S. Davis Cup team that beat Brazil last month, top-seeded Bob and Mike Bryan dismissed 6-foot-9 (2.06-meter) John Isner and 6-foot-6 (1.98-meter) Sam Querrey 6-3, 6-3. Querrey also played part-time for the Capitals last year.
   The 34-year-old Bryan twins, who grew up about a two-hour drive west in the Los Angeles area, seek their first Indian Wells title. 

COLLEGE SCORE

Men

   Pacific def. Texas-Arlington 4-0 in Stockton. No. 1 singles: Sem Verbeek (P) led Yauheni Yakauleu 7-6 (2), 1-0 (did not finish).

Capitals nip Breakers in thriller

   Mark Knowles wasn't even sure he would be able to play Friday night.
   The three-time World TeamTennis MVP not only played, he practically willed the Sacramento Capitals to a critical victory.
   In a match that came down to the last point, Sacramento rallied for a 19-18 victory over the rival Newport Beach Breakers at Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights.
   At 4-4 in the decisive tiebreaker, Knowles put away a volley in mixed doubles to end the thriller before a delirious announced crowd of 2,112 at 2,500-seat Capitals Stadium.
   Facing Travis Rettenmaier and Marie-Eve Pelletier, Knowles and Vania King overcame deficits of 0-2 in the set and 1-3 in the tiebreaker.
    Sacramento, which started the season 1-3, moved back into first place in the Western Conference at 5-4. St. Louis (5-5) and Kansas City (4-4) trail by one-half match.
   With the Capitals' next three matches on the road, including Monday night at 9-0 Washington, they needed a victory over Newport Beach  (3-6). Realistically, Sacramento must finish at least 8-6 in the regular season to reach the playoffs.
   Knowles, who will turn 40 in September, was questionable for Friday's match after hurting his right (playing) shoulder Thursday night at Kansas City.
   Mardy Fish, the top American among men or women at No. 9 in the world in singles, had been scheduled to join the Capitals for the match and could have substituted for Knowles. But Fish withdrew Thursday morning because of an abdominal muscle injury.
   As a precautionary measure, Sam Warburg came out of retirement for one night. The 28-year-old Sacramento native played for the Capitals from 2005 through 2009, helping them win their record sixth WTT title in 2007.
   Warburg, however, remained on the bench. Knowles lost 5-3 in his other set, men's doubles with Dusan Vemic.
   Sacramento led 10-4 behind Vemic (men's singles) and King and Yasmin Schnack (women's doubles), but Newport Beach came back to tie the score 14-14 entering the last set before nearly pulling out the match.
    The Breakers won't have to wait long for a chance at revenge. They host the Capitals tonight at 7:15.  

   Capitals 19, Newport Beach 18

   Men's singles -- Dusan Vemic, Capitals, def. Lester Cook, NB, 5-3.  
   Women's doubles -- Vania King and Yasmin Schnack, Capitals, def. Marie-Eve Pelletier and Anne Keothavong, NB, 5-1.
   Men's doubles -- Cook and Travis Rettenmaier, NB, def. Vemic and Mark Knowles, Capitals, 5-3.
   Women's singles -- Keothavong, NB, def. King, Capitals, 5-1.
   Mixed doubles -- Knowles and King, Capitals, def. Rettenmaier and Pelletier, NB, 5-4.

Season preview: Capitals hope to rebound

   Since winning the last of their record six World TeamTennis titles in 2007, the Sacramento Capitals have endured trying times.
   From 1997 through 2007, Sacramento went 108-35 (.755) and won all six of their league crowns, including four in a row (1997-2000) and five in six years. Since then, however, the Capitals have gone 20-22 (.476) with one playoff appearance.
   After going 8-6 and falling in the Western Conference final at home in Roseville in 2008, the Capitals have gone 6-8 and missed the playoffs in each of the past two seasons.
   Only once before since joining the league in 1986 had Sacramento had suffered a losing record (also 6-8 in 1991). Only three times before had the Capitals missed the playoffs.
   Not coincidentally, 2007 was Elena Likhovtseva's last full-time year on the women's tour, and Mark Knowles has played only one full-time season for the Capitals since then. Knowles missed the 2008 season because of the birth of his second child and played only four matches last year because the team "decided to make more of a (financial) investment in Vania (King) than myself," he said.
   Likhovtseva and Knowles were named to The Sacramento Bee's all-time Capitals team last year (with Lindsay Davenport and Brian MacPhie).
   Nor did it help that Sacramento native Sam Warburg, a strong singles and doubles player, retired at 26 in October 2009 after five seasons with the Capitals.
   Most crushing of all, Lonnie Nielson, the team's owner or co-owner from 2000 until early this year, was sentenced in May to seven years in prison for embezzling more than $800,000 from real estate clients.
   Bob Cook, a minority owner of the Sacramento Kings, bought 50 percent of the Capitals from Nielson in 2008 and the rest this year. Cook also promoted Matt McEvoy, then 25, from assistant general manager to general manager in March 2010.
   The Capitals will try to rebound from their woes beginning tonight, when they open their 26th season against the host St. Louis Aces.
   Sacramento's playoff chances appear much better this year than last. Knowles, a three-time WTT Male MVP formerly ranked No. 1 in the world in men's doubles, returns full-time.
   "When I talked to (management), Bob and Matt, about this season, I said, 'I really want to get back to the playoffs,' " Knowles, 39, of the Bahamas said during the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., in March. "It's really all I know with Sacramento."
   Also, Mardy Fish replaces Michael Chang as the Capitals' marquee player for one match. Fish, a 29-year-old native of Edina, Minn., living in Tampa, Fla., is ranked a career-high No. 8 in the world in men's singles. Chang, an International Tennis Hall of Famer, retired in 2003 at 31.
   Meanwhile, four of the top five women's singles players in WTT last year are not returning, at least full-time. The only exception is No. 4 Martina Hingis, a likely future Hall of Famer, of the New York Sportimes.
   Sacramento received a huge boost when Davenport, the league's reigning female MVP for the St. Louis Aces, announced this week that she's pregnant with her third child and will not play this season under doctor's orders. Another Western Conference star who's not returning is No. 3 Jarmila Gajdosova of the defending champion Kansas City Explorers. Meanwhile, the top six men's singles players return.
   Women's singles and doubles are critical in WTT's abbreviated format because it's more difficult for the powerful men to break each other's serve.
   King and Dusan Vemic return for their second season with the Capitals. Rounding out the squad is WTT and tour rookie Yasmin Schnack from the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove.
   "I like the team a lot," said Wayne Bryan, in his 10th year as the Capitals' coach. " ... Schnack has good size (5-foot-10), she's a big hitter, and she has a good volley. She'll be a big key. Other than Elena and Vania, she's the best (women's) doubles player I've had. Knowles is healthy. Vemic played singles and doubles last year. All the other teams are good as well."    
   Here's how the Capitals break down in each event:
   Men's singles -- Vemic, 35, of Serbia is flashy but inconsistent. He finished fifth among nine WTT regulars with a 54-53 (.505) record in games last season. Grade: C+.
   Women's singles -- Listed at 5-5, King is quick but can be overpowered by bigger players. A 22-year-old resident of Boynton Beach, Fla., who grew up in Long Beach, she finished sixth among 10 WTT regulars with a 50-48 (.510) mark in games last season. Against weaker competition in 2009, King placed first in singles for Springfield and earned the league's Female MVP award. Grade: B-.
   Men's doubles -- Knowles and Vemic, 35, of Serbia should form an excellent team after going 3-1 together last year. Although both have struggled this year, they have strong credentials. Knowles has won three Grand Slam men's doubles titles (2002 Australian Open, 2004 U.S. Open and 2007 French Open, all with Daniel Nestor). Vemic has reached two Grand Slam semifinals in the event (2008 French Open with Bruno Soares and 2010 Australian Open with Ivo Karlovic). Grade: A-.
   Women's doubles -- King and Schnack are close friends who complement each other well. King won the Wimbledon and U.S. Open women's doubles titles last year with Yaroslava Shvedova, and Schnack has reached three women's doubles finals in tennis' minor leagues this year. Grade: B.
   Mixed doubles -- Knowles, the 2009 Wimbledon mixed doubles champion with Anna-Lena Groenefeld, and King form perhaps the top team in the league. Grade: A.