AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 18, 2005

James Blake

JAMES BLAKE: I felt great. That was a feeling that I haven't had in a long time, so it was very much appreciated. I mean, this was my last Grand Slam, was this last year. So it's been a long time since I felt that good on a court. To play that well in my first Grand Slam back, it's a pretty unexpected and welcomed surprise. I really had no expectations. Didn't know if I could have gone out there and gotten beaten badly or played the way I did, or somewhere in between. It's a good feeling to go out and beat a player, I'm not sure what he's ranked, but I saw him play some pretty good matches last year.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah. So he's obviously on his way up. To beat a player like that feels great.

JAMES BLAKE: Yep. You know, I'm not sure what that was. It was a really long game or my serve actually just felt terrible. The rest of the match, before it, it was okay. After that game, it actually felt pretty good. I don't know if that was rust, if it was thinking a little too much, maybe getting ahead of myself, or just one bad game. But I talked to my coach after the match, and he's like, "You know what, you corrected it right after that game." The whole third set, I served really well. So I'm going to try not to worry too much about it since I corrected it. But obviously I know next round I'm not going to be afforded those luxuries. There's nothing you can do badly and still win the match against Lleyton. If I serve badly, he's going to chew up my -- chew that up and return great, as he's one of the best returners in the game. If I'm not returning well, he's going to get some easy service games, give him more confidence on the returns. So I'm not going to be able to do that kind of stuff. But, you know, we'll see if it all comes back to me against him.

JAMES BLAKE: Bad. Definitely characterize it as an unfortunate year. Hopefully the rest of them will be better than that one. You know, it's definitely a year I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. But, you know, unfortunately things happen, and all you can do is try to find silver linings and find reasons to improve or find ways to improve on what happened. The only thing I think I got out of it is a different perspective on life. You know, if I had gone out here and gotten beat 0, 0 and 0, I would have come off the court, said it's a bad day, by my mom's healthy. She's here with me, having a great time. My brother's happy and healthy. I can't complain too much. And it makes me smile a lot of times now when I hear people complain about their hotel room not being too big, or their girlfriend just dumped them. Things like that that I don't think are as important any more. I don't feel like I took anything for granted before, but now even more so. You know, just having the crowd out there, I'll spend a little extra time signing autographs just to try to make someone's day, try to do what I can to make other people happy, as well. Because I learned a whole lot from being at my dad's service and seeing so many people come from all over the country say how much they loved my dad and how great it was, just that they appreciated how genuine of a person he was, whether they played golf with him 10 times or whether they worked with him for 30 years. There was not a person that had a bad thing to say. And you could tell it was genuine. You could tell people enjoyed the fact that he was a good person, and that was just another statement of what he's been teaching me my whole life, is the most important thing is just to be a good person. And I'm trying to do that as best I can. I'm trying to personify his work ethic and the dignity that he went through his terrible illness with. You know, for me to ever complain after him going through a year of chemotherapy and a lot of pain and losing weight and surgeries without complaining, for me to complain about just about anything makes me -- it makes me think twice now before I really start complaining, and just try to appreciate everything that I have going for me, which right now I'm really happy to say is a lot. I'm back on tour. I'm having a great time. I'm doing what I love for a living. The fans out here, they were great. I had it seemed like a full Show Court 3. A lot of them cheering for me, chanting, doing the Aussie chant for me. You know what, I feel great.

JAMES BLAKE: As I've told my mom, and I've told a few other people, the best thing that happened to me last year was breaking my neck. I'm 100% serious about it. I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but I got to spend the last six weeks of my dad's life with him. I was around him a whole lot then. Like I said, I saw the dignity that he went through that with without ever complaining, without ever asking me to go to the hospital to see him, without ever saying, "I need you here, I want you to be around." Obviously, our whole family did that because we wanted to be there. If it wasn't for that, a lot of that time I would have been over in Europe. I'm sure he never would have told me, "Come on home, I want you to be here." I'd like to think my mom would have recognized the situation and told me. But I know for a fact my dad wouldn't have said, "Come back here, I want you by my side." If I had heard any of that in his voice, if he ever said that to me, I would have been on the first flight to get back and probably gotten into an accident on the way there trying to get there as fast as I can because I would know something's up. I was lucky - somewhat lucky - to be home. I mean, I was so lucky it wasn't an inch further over. We were talking about if I could ever walk again. I'm so lucky that it was at the time it was that I got to come home and be with my dad.

JAMES BLAKE: Pretty badly. It was a week after my dad passed.

JAMES BLAKE: My dad passed on July 3rd, so it was about a week later. At first I thought I just had an ear infection and maybe Strep throat or sore throat. It was pretty bad, but it was just on one side. It was really weird. I never had anything quite that painful. Stopped me from practicing. Went to a couple doctors. They just gave me some antibiotics. Next day I woke up and couldn't move the left side of my face and had a rash all over it. I was a little concerned. I called the doctor. He said, Me meet me at the emergency room, which led me to a little more concern. And they were then relatively optimistic after they did a whole bunch of tests and everything, stuck me with some IVs. They tried to make sure that a nerve -- the swelling went down. I was obviously very, very concerned at that point. I didn't know what was going on. You know, that's another time when you get kind of everything taken away from you. I mean, I couldn't balance. If I got up out of bed, it felt like I was going to fall back down. I couldn't smile really. Eating was difficult. I mean, it's amazing what you appreciate once you get a lot of things taken away from you. I mean, no one, I don't think, unless they've had something like that, thinks about the fact they're able to smile every day or thinks about the fact that they can blink normally and that their eye closes when they go to sleep. Just little things like that. I mean, for sure I took that for granted. For sure, almost everyone takes that for granted. When you have it taken away from you, it opens your eyes to the fact that there's some people that don't have that ability, and there's some people much less fortunate. I'm lucky now that I can come back and just smile, you know. Every day that I can smile and it doesn't look ridiculous, as it did for a while there, it's a blessing to me. I don't know what else I need to go through that I am taking for granted now, but I hope there's nothing else I need to get to show me that I'm taking some things for granted. I now appreciate so much just being healthy.

JAMES BLAKE: Right now, if I look in the mirror and I move -- kind of form a brow really quickly, I can tell this one isn't moving quite as fast. If I blink my eye real fast 10 times in a row, my coach said it's still not quite exactly the same, which is what kept me out from playing really, was the fact that my eye wasn't blinking, so my focus was completely thrown off on the court. When I would try to practice and stuff, it was okay, but I could tell I wasn't seeing the ball as quickly.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah. I really couldn't play. I tried to play a tournament, just because I was spinning my wheels in practice, not getting any better, just so bored and kind of frustrated that I couldn't get any better, that I wanted to kind of see how it was. I learned pretty quickly that it wasn't even close to ready. And after that tournament I tried to play in Delray. I came back to the doctor. They really had no kind of precedent to go on with a professional athlete that had this. So they just -- because I would have been able to go back to a normal job, to a desk job probably at that point, but to try to see 130 mile-an-hour serves when you're a little off, it's not going to work. They said at that point it's not going to get better to the point where you're a hundred percent this year, so you might as well quit, you might as well call it a year. So I did. Then I tried to see another silver lining. I got to see some friends. I decided to take a few weekend trips. Went with my brother out to Colorado to visit a friend or two. Went up to Boston to visit some friends, practice and hang out with the Harvard team. I went down to DC to see a good friend of mine. I was out in LA for a few days seeing friends. I don't get to do that when I'm on tour this much. That's the last thing I usually want to do is travel. So, you know, getting to catch up with some friends that I don't normally get to see. That's something else I guess I got out of it. They just had to put up with me looking kind of freakish. They did their best. Once they all knew that I was going to get a hundred percent better, they kept me pretty grounded and laughed at me pretty nicely. It was fun. Especially Mardy, he did a great job of that. The first time he saw me smile when I came down to visit the guys at The Open, I think he got a picture or two and will blackmail me if ever needed with that.

JAMES BLAKE: It's tough for me to say. I think today I played great, but I also know -- I don't think the consistency is there. Even last week when I was practicing, I would have a really good day and then a day where I didn't feel good at all just because I think when you're playing a ton of matches, everything kind of comes second nature. You don't even really need to think. And right now I'll hesitate sometimes. And you can't do that, because, I mean, you're not playing college kids any more, you're playing pros. If you hesitate a little bit, it's going to make a big difference and you lose those big points. I definitely just don't have that same confidence and that same feeling of everything's just flowing and everything's effortless, when you're playing well. So I know that might take a while to get back, but I really don't know when that's going to click in. I think the more matches I play, the quicker it's going to come back. I still definitely feel like there are days when I can go, like I did today, where I can play with the best in the world, I think, but realistic to the point where I doubt I have the same consistency that took me to 20 in the world. But that's not to say I doubt the fact that I can -- I definitely don't doubt the fact that I can go out and beat a Lleyton Hewitt who is No. 2 or 3 in the world or whatever on a given day. But I think my chances might not be as good as when I was playing at this level much more consistently.