WESTERN AND SOUTHERN FINANCIAL GROUP MASTERS

August 11, 2003

James Blake

JAMES BLAKE: It helps a lot. This is kind of my first breakthrough, where I got a couple wins over Top 50 players. I beat Clement and Boutter and then a great match against Rafter. As I said last year in the speech, I feel like I'm kind of a part of the family. To have a place where you feel comfortable coming back here, I mean, you look at a guy like Michael Chang who probably hasn't had anywhere close to a good year by his standards, but he comes back here and is playing great right now. You know, you just start feeling comfortable in certain places, and this is definitely a place for me where I feel comfortable. Fans have a lot to do with that.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah. Man, it's great, especially doing it with someone who's such a good friend of mine. He's really been like a mentor to me on tour. He's such a great guy, and another American from the Midwest. So we had so much fun, and the crowd supported us a lot. I think the tournament was happy. We had great crowds out for doubles. You know, I only have two doubles titles. And, you know, to have won here in such a big tournament, it was really exciting for me. I hope the fans had a good time. Definitely, I mean, I feel comfortable here in singles and doubles now. It's a good feeling.

JAMES BLAKE: With Wayne?

JAMES BLAKE: Oh. Well, no, there are certain things you know you're going to get. He's one of the best defenders, I think, in the game. I think he struggled in the beginning. It seemed like he was trying to kind of out-hit me, and I just happened to be playing some of my best tennis right at the beginning. He might have had a couple of mistakes here and there to give him a little bit of a slow start. But then he started playing some great defense. He does that so well - just retrieving, keeping balls deep, and making you have to hit a few winners each time. So I knew I was gonna get that. I knew I was gonna get a tough match. He's won probably $10 million in his career in prize money; wasn't really a fluke. It's not like he's just gonna come out and play terrible. I knew it was gonna be a good match. Also, he's never had problems with the heat, so I knew he could run all day. I got -- just happened to bear down at the right time in the second-set tiebreaker and play some of my best tennis.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, it's funny. I mean, it seems common. Every time you ask someone who they're playing, you know, they tell you and just every single person, it seems like their next answer is, "Yeah, there's no easy draws here. There's no easy draws here."It's just no matter who you play, you got to play your best to win matches, I mean, let alone win tournaments or win semis or whatever. You've got to play your best just to get through the first and second round. That's just the way the depth of men's tennis is these days.You got a guy like Fabrice Santoro beating Carlos Moya, the defending champion. There are things like that that are going to happen. I think maybe we need to stop being surprised when six or seven of the seeds go out in the first round. It's just that's how close the players are now.

JAMES BLAKE: Well, I'm definitely getting better. I had a couple disappointing losses in the clay court season, and as well in the grass court season. But now getting back on to the hard, I'm really looking forward to these next couple weeks here, like I said, where I'm very comfortable, and the US Open where I'm also comfortable just because that's kind of my real hometown crowd - as close as I'm going to get to where I grew up. I love playing on such a great stage there. So I've gotten better, which is always my goal going into each year. So I'm happy with that. But I just had a couple bad-luck losses. I can't really worry about that. I've always said I'm not worried about the rankings when I was moving up. Now, if I start moving down, I'll stick to that. It's a little tougher, but it's still the same situation where I'm just trying to get better. I knew there would be ups and downs in rankings. I'll still just get better, and I think eventually the rankings will work out for themselves.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, sure. I guess it means there's a few more people cheering for me, hoping I do well. I'll be happy with that. I understand that it's in America here. This is where I think the market is the biggest. We have, obviously, so many fans, so many sports fans in this country, that a lot of times the promoters want to see Americans doing well. Luckily, we have Andy doing unbelievable, taking the pressure off some of the young guys. But I definitely feel that's a good opportunity. There's a little bit of pressure on you. I always feel like that's just an opportunity to do something great. That means more people are watching, more people are really seeing what I'm doing. I don't want to let those people down. I want to do my best, and that's all I can do, then I'll be proud of it.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, I take it very seriously, although I definitely don't have a problem with them taking up basketball, as long as they're taking up something and doing something productive. I think just offering tennis as an opportunity is the key; make sure they have that option, just knowing that they have plenty of options, they can do whatever they want. If they see someone like me being successful in tennis, I think it gives them another option. It doesn't mean they can only look up to Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan and say, "Well, I have to get out of this situation, I have to play basketball." They can say, "I can play tennis," you know, just like Tiger Woods did for golf. Now you see so many more kids playing golf, and it's accepted now as a sport for anyone. The Williams sisters have done a great job promoting it. I'd like to do the same on the men's side. It definitely makes a difference, having role models. You see it kind of in the generations. When Arthur Ashe did so well, he inspired even people like my father to play, which in turn got me into tennis. But he inspired people like Mal Washington, Brian Shelton. Then I see players like that, and I come along and I want to be just like them. Now, it's kind of a dream that one day someone will be sitting here, saying, "I watched James Blake and that helped me to start playing," and they're doing even better than me. That would be great. I take that very seriously. I want to promote the sport, and I want to promote it in a positive way as opposed to some of the unfortunate, negative role models that are out there in the sports world today. I don't ever want to be a part of that.

JAMES BLAKE: No, I don't think it held me up at all. I think it helped me. I also think tennis is a very individual sport, so what worked for one person won't work for another. I think if Pete Sampras and Jim Courier traded work ethics and how they went about their training regimens and stuff like that, neither one of them would have made it to No. 1 in the world - well, they both have unbelievable talent so maybe they would have, but I don't think their careers would have been nearly as good. You have to find what works for you. For Jim, it was working harder than anyone else out on tour and just being in the best shape. For me, going to college was the best option. I wasn't physically or mentally ready to go pro when I was 17 years old and going into college. I was probably 140 pounds and would have gotten blown over by a stiff wind. So being out on tour, I would have gotten just eaten up. I don't think that would have helped my confidence, and I just wanted to go to college to improve on a bunch of things. To be honest, I was really planning on going for four years, maybe being an All-American or something, doing well in school, and maybe trying it after I was done, playing. But I just improved to the point where it became obvious that this was the next step. I think it helped me kind of have a normal childhood, which is, I mean, what I had. Then going to college helped me kind of see that through and have a great time at school, meet some of my best friends in the world. A couple of them are going to come down from Cleveland, see me here. It gave me whole new life experiences a lot of guys on tour didn't have that I appreciate so much now realizing that this is the life I'm a part of. I'm really glad I got to meet those people and have those normal years, I guess you could call them. For Mardy and Andy, they were much better prospects than I was probably, and they've proven that their decision was right for them. They didn't need to go to college. They didn't need -- they weren't going to lose a lot of confidence just losing a few matches in challengers and futures when they're 17 and 18 years old. They fought through that, and they're doing unbelievable. That's the right decision for them. I think too many people shrug college off as it's just the minor leagues and it's not really -- it means you're not good enough; I don't see that at all. It's just a personal decision. If you think it's gonna help you, if you know you have the work ethic to get better in college, you can do it. I got, I mean, 100, 200, 300 percent better in college in two years. That was because I knew I had to work hard with the other guys on the team that had different goals. I had to force them to help me get better. It's definitely possible. That was the best decision I made, I think.

JAMES BLAKE: No, I definitely wouldn't call it much of a career (smiling). I don't do a whole lot of it. It's just kind of, you know -- IMG represents me for my sports deals, and they just said they had a modelling division. The guy who's the head of it is a huge tennis fan; I got to meet him. He thought it would be a great idea for them to represent me. I don't know anything -- I still don't really know that much about the modelling world. It's just -- he helps out when he can. If there's anything that happens to fit in , he understands -- since he's such a big tennis fan, he understands the schedule and he knows I'm really not going to have many opportunities to do things. But if something fits in, he'll let me know. If not, I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.

JAMES BLAKE: My shoulder feels 100 percent. I've been doing my exercises every day now; just like brushing my teeth, I have to do them every single day, and it's been fine.

JAMES BLAKE: I don't know. I'd like to say a lot, but I think there's some pretty good doubles teams out there. So we'll see how it goes. I know we're gonna have fun; we always do when we play doubles together. We'll have a great time. I think when we're having that much fun, we're a pretty dangerous team. So we'll see what we can do.