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INTERNAZIONALI D'ITALIA

May 8, 2006

James Blake

ROME, ITALY

THE MODERATOR: First question, please.
Q. Obviously, quite a difficult day again. Can you talk about what the difficulties were out there.
JAMES BLAKE: Well, Serra played well, and I had bad timing for my bad play. I could chalk it up to rust, I haven't played a match in three weeks, or not a lot of experience on clay, or just one of those days.
Served for the second set twice and really played pretty poor games then. That's frustrating.
But at least I know I can win on clay. I mean, I put myself in the position and then just didn't. So that's why I struggled today.
Q. What did you exactly do before the tournament during the three weeks?
JAMES BLAKE: First I got my wisdom teeth pulled, then I had to take a few days off because of that. Then I went back to Tampa and trained at Saddlebrook. Then I went up to Connecticut and spent a little time with my family and friends there, still practicing with my coach as well up in Connecticut.
Got here on Thursday -- excuse me, got here on Friday. Left Thursday, got here Friday. Was ready to play, but just I guess not quite ready to beat a guy like Florent Serra yet.
Q. Do you feel you have to acquire a bit more self-belief on this surface?
JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, although I think it's getting there. Unfortunately, as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. So, I mean, I'm not gonna come out here and feel like Nadal or Moya on the first day out here.
I feel like I'm getting better. I feel like this year I definitely have a better attitude than in years past about coming over here. This kind of hurts that a little, but it will test whether my attitude can stay positive about playing on clay. I still think it can.
I've got two more tournaments on this. I'm excited to hopefully do well, do better than this one. I definitely feel like I can still just play my game. And, like I said, I put myself in position today and then just played badly.
I want to, in my head, just chalk that up to rust and say that it has nothing to do with the surface, it was just not playing matches lately and missing a few shots when I shouldn't have. Hopefully, next time, that won't happen. Hopefully in Hamburg and Paris I'll have the same amount of confidence and I'll be able to close out matches.
Q. How much did you play on clay when you were a kid?
JAMES BLAKE: Not a whole lot. The club I grew up playing tennis at had four hard courts and two hard courts indoors. I would be on the clay courts maybe one out of every 20 times I was playing there, and that was -- I would usually complain when I was on it because I didn't want to be on those courts but all the others were taken. So not a whole lot.
But I've been playing on it more in the last few years, obviously. Actually, in America I thought I did pretty well on clay. I won the National Clay Courts when I was 17, I think. So against the Americans, I feel like I did pretty well but, obviously, that's different than the guys around here that grew up on it. I'm sure Florent has played many more hours on clay than I have, and most of the guys out here have. But I still feel like tennis is tennis and I can figure out a way to win on a surface that isn't as comfortable to me.
Q. What is the most difficult for you on this surface? Is it the movement? Is it the bounce of the ball?
JAMES BLAKE: I'd say it's probably the movement for the Americans, for me especially. I feel like my movement is an asset on most surfaces, but here I definitely get wrong-footed and the sliding into balls is foreign to me. I do sometimes slide on hard courts, but it's just right at the end as opposed to sliding into a ball as many of the natural clay courters do.
I think there's a couple of approaches that Americans have taken. Andre just pretty much refused to slide and just stopped. The rest of us are generally trying to slide, but doing it very awkwardly. I need to get better at that, but I want to make sure it's something that's not entering into my thought process too much, it's something that hopefully comes naturally after playing on this for long enough. Because if I'm thinking about that while I'm playing, it's probably not going to be effective. I'm going to end up missing a lot more.
I want it to come naturally to me, but the movement is probably the biggest hurdle for most of the Americans and myself.

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