Karlovic completes NorCal sweep; new rankings

   There was no stopping Ivo Karlovic and his blistering serve in Northern California.
   The 6-foot-10 Croat outlasted Sam Querrey, a 6-6 San Francisco native, 6-7 (2), 6-1, 6-4 Sunday to win the $100,000 First Republic Bank Tiburon Challenger at the Tiburon Peninsula Club. Karlovic also won the $100,000 Sacramento Challenger the previous week.
   Both Karlovic, 32, and Querrey, 24, are former top-20 players coming back from injuries.
   Karlovic, who reached a career-high No. 14 in 2008, missed the last half of 2010 after undergoing Achilles' tendon-related surgery. Querrey, who climbed to a career-high No. 17 in January, sat out for three months after having arthroscopic elbow surgery in June.
   The difference in Sunday's final was that Karlovic, seeded second, saved all seven break points against him, whereas Querrey, seeded third, lost three of the six break points he faced.
   The other statistics were essentially even between two of the most dominating servers in tennis.
   Karlovic had 14 aces to Querrey's 12 and converted 70 percent of his first serves to his opponent's 64. Both players won 81 percent of the points on their first serves and committed  three double faults. Karlovic won 97 total points and Querrey 93.
    In the doubles final, Carsten Ball and Chris Guccione of Australia also completed a Northern California sweep with a 6-1, 5-7, 10-6 tiebreak victory over Steve Johnson of Orange and Querrey.
   WTA tour -- Vania King of the Sacramento Capitals and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan clinched the fourth and final spot in the doubles field of the WTA Championships, Oct. 25-30 in Istanbul, Turkey.
   King and Shvedova, the U.S. Open runners-up, join Wimbledon champions Kveta Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik, U.S. Open titlists Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond and Australian Open winners Gisela Dulko and Flavia Pennetta.
   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.
   Scott Lipsky, 2002 NCAA doubles runner-up from Stanford -- No. 26 in doubles (no change), unranked in singles.
   Mark Knowles, Sacramento Capitals of World TeamTennis (2001-07, 2009-11) -- No. 44 in doubles (-1), unranked in singles.
   Dmitry Tursunov, Folsom resident -- No. 40 in singles (+1), No. 151 in doubles (+17).
   Sam Querrey, San Francisco native -- No. 114 in singles (+6), No. 31 in doubles (+3).
   David Martin, 2002 NCAA doubles runner-up from Stanford -- No. 108 in doubles (-14), No. 702 in singles (+5).
   John Paul Fruttero, Cal All-American in 2001 and 2002 -- Career-high No. 133 in doubles (no change), 1,246 in singles (-+3).
   Conor Niland, 2006 Pacific-10 Conference Player of the Year and two-time All-American at Cal -- No. 203 in singles (-10), unranked in doubles. 
   Jimmy Wang, Folsom resident -- No. 380 in singles (+2), No. 553 in doubles (+115).
   Dusan Vemic, Capitals (2010-11) -- No. 501 in doubles (+2), No. 1,534 in singles (-3).
   Kiryl Harbatsiuk, three-time Big Sky Conference MVP (2009-11) at Sacramento State -- No. 764 in singles (-33), No. 1,259 in doubles (-3).

Women

   Vania King, Capitals (2010-11) -- No. 9 in doubles (no change), No. 79 in singles (+4).
   Raquel Kops-Jones, 2003 NCAA doubles champion from Cal -- No. 37 in doubles (+5), unranked in singles.
   Yasmin Schnack, Elk Grove resident, Sacramento Capitals of World TeamTennis (2011) -- No. 212 in doubles (-2), No. 406 in singles (-20).
   Maria Sanchez, Modesto resident -- No. 378 in doubles (-2), No. 695 in singles (+2).