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SONY ERICSSON OPEN

March 23, 2007

James Blake

KEY BISCAYNE, FLORIDA

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. What do you think happened?
JAMES BLAKE: I didn't play very well. It's a bad day. I'm going to worry about Davis Cup now. Slow start a little bit. Hit a couple bad points in the tiebreaker where I kind of gave away points, and then second set got rolling.
Third set, same thing: One bad game, and then I had a chance to break back and it didn't happen. I can't lose those kind of points and expect to win matches.

Q. Are you bewildered by this recent stretch, or do you feel like you know what's going on?
JAMES BLAKE: Well, I'm just a little disappointed in the way I've played, but I have to be realistic in knowing that there's going to be times in my career where I don't play as well as I can.
It's frustrating on the American hard courts where I usually have the best success, but there's always next year, there's always a next tournament luckily, and the next one is really important to me.
So I'll get a week of training and hopefully get a little confidence somehow in that week, because that's the biggest difference is just having the confidence on those big points to go for my shots and make sure that I feel really good going into those instead of maybe hoping the other guy is going to miss. Now I need to play those more confidently.

Q. It's a cliche, I guess, to say that it's harder to stay at the top than get to the top. But how true are you finding that right now?
JAMES BLAKE: It's definitely true, but I don't know if that was it today. I think it was just a little bit of the lack of confidence. I tried to do my best, and I thought I did a pretty good job of getting just as fired up to play this match as he did.
I know he was excited, didn't have anything to lose after losing to me last week. I still felt like I did a good job in preparing and knowing that he was going to come out firing and playing some of his best tennis. I was ready for that, and I just didn't execute.
It's definitely tough. The guys are shooting for you, the guys don't have anything to lose, but I definitely am a little disappointed because I thought I could have done better this week. But it's a long year. Maybe if I don't do well on the hard courts here, maybe the reverse will be true and I'll do really well on the European clay. Got to think positive.

Q. Did you feel a little tentative on that last shot of the tiebreaker?
JAMES BLAKE: What happened is I locked up. That's where my confidence came up. I would have just hit my shot and not even thought about it. I locked up at the last second and saw he was covering where I was going to go.
When I'm playing well I don't even look up and I don't notice what he's doing. I just hit my shot to where I want to go, and if they can come up with something good, good.
This time I looked up, but you can't do that on a tiebreaker on those kind of points. That's why I'm sitting here right now getting ready to think about when I go home.

Q. What happened to your wrist?
JAMES BLAKE: I've been taping my wrist for a little while, and I don't know if it was just too tight or whatever, but I started cramping just right under the tape, and it made it so I actually couldn't open my hand. I couldn't really grip the racquet. They just massaged it out. It was just kind of in a knot for a few minutes, and it's fine now.

Q. You're not concerned about it?
JAMES BLAKE: No.

Q. You said that it's a lack of confidence, but was it just today, or it's been a few days?
JAMES BLAKE: I don't know where it started, but maybe last week at Indian Wells, same thing: I had chances but didn't take advantage of them. Last year and when I'm playing well and playing confident, I go for those shots and I tend to -- more of those tend to go my way.
Today they didn't; last week they didn't. Maybe it's been two weeks, but I hopefully can turn it around. It turned around pretty quickly from being very confident to not as confident, so I hope it can turn right back around the same way.
I'm lucky enough to have had some success in the past to draw on, and I think I have enough of that to know that I can beat just about anyone in the world when I'm playing well and playing confidently.

Q. Is there any way in which you feel as if the last two years have caught up with you somehow?
JAMES BLAKE: I don't know. I really don't. I feel like I'm the same, if not a better player, so I don't think that's it. I still have the same hunger to succeed in these kind of tournaments and at the Grand Slams, so I don't know if that's caught up to me or what that could be.
I've definitely played a lot of matches, so that's a possibility. But I don't feel like my body is breaking down outside of the little cramp today. I don't feel like my body is breaking down or I'm getting old or anything like that. I still feel like I can have a lot of success. I don't think that's what it is, but you never know.
There's a million reasons out there that I could throw out as excuses, but I try not to make those kind of excuses. It was just a day I didn't execute.

Q. Could you talk about Serra? Did you expect such a level from him?
JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, he played well. I beat him last year and you beat someone one week and they're ranked higher you've got nothing to lose. I had a feeling he'd come out playing better this week, and he did.
His nerves remained steady in the big points, and he deserved to win today after the way I played on those big points.

Q. Is winning the only way to get the confidence back, or is there something else you do mentally? Do you look at tapes of yourself at your highest points or anything, or is it just winning a match and another match and another match?
JAMES BLAKE: Winning is the best answer. Any of those other ones, I don't think anyone has figured out a magic formula. You've just got to get out there and win.
Sometimes the only other thing that can help is trying to trick yourself. Hopefully I can count on being a dumb jock and I can fool myself into thinking that I can play confidently next time. I think I can do that.
It's just a little bit of tricking yourself, and before you know it, the confidence just comes naturally.

End of FastScripts

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