Bryans advance to fifth Sydney doubles final

   Bob and Mike Bryan have made a habit of winning doubles titles all over the world.
   But aside from their native California, perhaps no place feels as comfortable as Australia.
   The top seeds and former NCAA champions from Stanford defeated the unseeded British pair of Colin Fleming and Ross Hutchins 6-4, 6-2  Thursday to reach the final of the $434,250 Apia International in Sydney for the fourth time in five years and fifth overall Thursday.
   The Bryans, who won Sydney in 2009, will seek their second title in the tournament when they meet wild cards Matthew Ebden of Australia and Jarkko Nieminen of Finland. Nieminen also will play for the singles title against Julien Benneteau of France.
   Beginning next week, the Bryans will try to win their fourth straight Australian Open crown in Melbourne and sixth in seven years.
   Australian Open draw -- Sacramento-area resident Dmitry Tursunov will face ninth-seeded Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia in the first round of the Australian Open.
   It will be their third meeting in four months, with Tursunov winning in the first round at Tokyo in early October and Tipsarevic avenging the loss two weeks later in the quarterfinals at Moscow, Tursunov's hometown, en route to the title. Overall, the series is tied 2-2.
   Tipsarevic came within a third-set tiebreaker of winning last week's Aircel Chennai (India) Open.
   Vania King of the Sacramento Capitals in World TeamTennis drew Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine in the opening round. In their only previous match, King, then 18, won 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 in the first round at Indian Wells in 2007.
   King could face 15th-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, a former Capital from Russia, in the second round.
   Australian Open qualifying -- Advancing to the final round of men's qualifying for the Australian Open was 11th-seeded Rik de Voest, a South African who won the inaugural Sacramento Challenger in 2005. But Taiwan's Jimmy Wang, a former top-100 player based in the Sacramento area, lost in the second round.
   In women's qualifying, the last two Redding Challenger champions, Julia Boserup (2011) of Newport Beach and 23rd-seeded Jamie Hampton of Auburn, Ala., advanced to the last round.
   Michelle Larcher de Brito, a former Capital from Portugal, played fourth-seeded Arantxa Parra Santonja of Spain in the second round early Friday morning.