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U.S. OPENAugust 28, 2007James BlakeNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. I heard the remark you said at the end about Harry Potter and Federer. You've always been a very realistic person in saying that he's good. Would it be better if you had an attitude of, I don't care who he is, I can catch him, or your makeup is that this is okay the way it is? JAMES BLAKE: I mean, I'd love to believe that all it takes is saying I can do something. There's a million of those self-help books to tell you to just see it and believe it and it's gonna happen. You know, that's a great policy. Every time I go into playing Roger, I think I can win, and I think I have just as good a chance as anybody to beat him I feel like on my best day, I'm definitely one of the best tennis players in the world. I feel like I have a chance. But after the match, I'm always pretty realistic. The guy's good. The guy's better than good. He's possibly the greatest of all time, probably the greatest of all time. I'm doing my best. I'm trying to beat him. But there have been times where he just came up and played better tennis than me, so I am realistic, but I'm also hopeful. The way I look at it, I try not to look at things that are so far in advance. If I had said three, four, five years ago that my goal is to be top 10 in the world, I don't think I would have made it here. I set smaller goals, attainable goals, each day. Those are always just to get better. My goals mainly circle around the things I can control: practice, working as hard as I can, being as prepared as I can, being as professional as I can on the court for practice and matches, just keeping my head up in every situation. I feel like I've gotten a lot better at that, and that's gotten me to where I am. I'm definitely realistic in the fact that if I play Roger, he's the favorite. But we don't play the matches on paper. We go out there. I still have a chance. He is still human. There are days he's going to be off. Q. You said you like being the underdog. JAMES BLAKE: At times, yeah, it takes pressure away. I've definitely gone out there, there's been some times where I've played well against him, there have been some times I haven't played my best against him. Every time it seems like he finds a way to step up his game. Just so happens the few times I played him have been in finals. His finals record speaks for itself and how impressive it is. Most of his records are impressive, but that one is just incredible. You know when you play him in a final he's going to come to play. He's going to bring his best tennis. Sometimes that's tough to compete with. I felt like I did my best and really played pretty well in Shanghai. I played pretty well for the start of Indian Wells. Actually played pretty well in Miami last year, too. You know, I know he's human. I know there's chances to get closer to him, to possibly win. But those times he just played too good. I wish there was a way I could just say I'm going to beat him and go out and do it, but I don't think it's just lip service that's going to get me to go over the hump. It's going to be figuring out a better game plan or just being able to execute better or him having an off day. Q. Being a finalist in Cincinnati, and winner in New Haven, would you say you are in our best moment? JAMES BLAKE: I'm playing some of my best tennis, yeah. I definitely think I'm coming in here very confident. It's one of those things where for me, when I'm winning a lot of matches the way I have been, I get to 4-All, 5-All, 6-All in sets, I just feel like I'm gonna win 'em. I just have that confidence. There's really no substitute for the way I was winning matches. I've come back from a couple matches. I've come back from three match points last week in New Haven. Came back from a match point down in L.A. To do those kind of things just gives me more and more confidence, so I feel great right now. Q. Talk about the first set and saving those two set points. JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, that was a good feeling. I think first one was on my serve. Good first serve. One that one. He got a little tight I think at 6-5. He maybe respected my speed a little too much and tried to make his forehand too good. That's sometimes what running down balls can do. It can help you in the big moments. Just showing a guy that you're gonna get to everything, [you're are gonna try to stay in every point. Maybe makes them look up, look at what you're doing. It worked that time. Once I got back to 6-All I felt great. I felt like I was in the driver's seat. Could take my chances, go after it. He might be a little down. I had a second life. When you have that second life you feel like can you can go for your shots and be even more confident. It showed with those next two points I won, and then I was off and running. Q. When he missed that forehand, you had a little pep in your step when you switched sides. What were you thinking? JAMES BLAKE: I was thinking that, you know, that's happened to everyone before, you know, when you play someone that's that quick or it's a tense moment. You just pick your head up a tiny bit and you miss that and you go over it in your head. You're thinking about it. I just wanted to just show that I was confident now. At that point, at 6-All, I'm ready to keep playing. I'm excited that I'm still alive. He could have very easily just guessed right, ripped the forehand and been up one set to love. The fact that he didn't, the fact that I was still there, I had a feeling he was thinking about that and I was thinking about that, so it gave me a lot of confidence. I did have some pep in my step because I was excited to still be alive in that set and wanted to take advantage of it. Q. After what happened with Calleri, those two set points, didn't seem much. JAMES BLAKE: They're still important. At 6-4, you're not thinking about any other matches. You're thinking about staying alive in that set. It's good to know that I can come back from those situations like last week against Calleri. It's not the ideal situation you want to be in. I'm definitely -- maybe not as calm as can be at 6-4 down. You know it's not always in your hands, especially if they have a serve -- if they have one of the set points on their serve. Any guy these days has a big enough serve to flat hit an ace. You know, sometimes it might not be in your control. I was lucky enough to get it back into my control. Q. Over the years you've been very open about a lot of things, but you've also kept things close to the vest. Obviously you put a lot into your book that you never talked about before. Is it strange now to know that a lot of people are walking around with that personal knowledge of you? Any regrets? JAMES BLAKE: No, I really don't. The first thing that I needed to do was make sure my mom approved. She was okay with all that stuff coming out. I've always been okay with myself being in the public spotlight. That's what I do. My life is in a public arena. So I'm completely comfortable with whatever people want to say, negative or positive, about me. That's what I signed up for when I entered professional sports. But it was always difficult for me, some of the things I'm sure you're talking about keeping close to myself, were things about my family. Because I know they're in this involuntarily. Just being associated with me brings them into the public spotlight. That was always tough for me. So to put my family and my friends in this public of a situation, I wanted to make sure they were okay with it. It was really partly a tribute to my dad and my friends for how much they helped me. So I wanted to give them so much credit. Because now I'm getting a ton of the credit and adulation for comeback and everything that I've done since 2004, and I wanted people to know that it wasn't just me. It's not just me out there on the court. It's all the fans, it's all the friends of mine that cooked me dinners, it's all the friends that stopped by just to pick my day up when I was maybe a little down. I wanted to make sure they got that credit. When they all were okay with it and they all said that it's fine, then I'm really glad people got to know that. I'm really glad people can see that pro athletes don't necessarily always have the smoothest ride. They don't have anything in their life perfect. There are ways to deal with tough times. There's ways to deal with great times. I just hope my way -- it worked for me and I hope it can be somewhat of an inspiration for others of how to get through tough times. For me that was with my friends and family. I'm really proud of them for helping me. I'm proud of the book because I've heard so many people come up to me with positive reinforcement for me, saying they can relate to it, they can relate to me more now as a human being as opposed to a guy that can go out there and play in front of 20,000 people. There aren't that many people that can relate to that situation, but there's a lot that can relate to the very human things I've gone through in the first three or four years. Q. In a way it seemed like you dwelled on your big losses more than your wins. JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, and I definitely used to do that. That's one thing that now at 27 years old, feeling like a veteran, I feel like I'm much better at. Losses now are still tough. I'm a competitor so I don't enjoy that feeling at all, but I'm finally learning -- I've been told so many times throughout the years that you really do have to have a short memory. It's just taken a while to sink in for me. I feel like now it is. To have that loss to Roger and then come right back and play well in New Haven, something maybe I wouldn't have done at other times. To have that loss in Indianapolis and come back and still play some of my best tennis. I don't know if those things would have happened years ago. I definitely did used to dwell on losses and think about -- especially if I were to lose to someone ranked lower than me or someone I thought I should beat. Those things would eat away at me. I'd think, how can I now go play someone ranked ahead of me when I just lost to someone ranked behind me. Now I don't worry about the ranking. I don't worry about any of that kind of ancillary stuff. I just worry about going through my routine, what I need to do, what I need to accomplish. It's been a little better. Q. Unless I'm mistaken, you and Althea Gibson are two of the best players ever to start off in their early days in Harlem. Could you talk about Althea Gibson, about the ceremony last night. Your dad ever talk to you about her? JAMES BLAKE: No, he didn't bring up Althea. For him, he was inspired by Arthur Ashe. I think we all understand the fact that Althea preceded Arthur and was someone that was probably an inspiration for him, someone that -- I don't know their personal relationship, but I hope they talked about how much they were going through together. Althea was someone that put so much of the burden on herself and did it amazingly. I think Serena and Venus did a great job of representing her spirit last night. To have that many impressive females here last night is something that may not happen ever here, really. To have that many people that have accomplished so much, actually male or female, is just incredible. To know that Althea inspired that is something that I hope she's looking down and she's happy with that and she's smiling with the fact that that many people are here willing to pay tribute to her. Many of them seem genuinely humbled by the situation, by the moment. That says a ton about Althea and what she did for the game. Q. In the group last night there were so many. Were there one or two that stood out in the group for you? JAMES BLAKE: For me, Aretha. She's incredible. To hear her sing is just amazing. She's done so much with her voice. When a musician has that many hits, you realize how many people they've influenced. So many of us know, whether it's one of her songs that's a favorite, one of her albums that's a favorite, almost everyone has heard just about all of her songs. Plenty of time I spent listening to all of her music. It's impressive to hear her. Q. Why do you think it took so long for Althea's memory to be honored? JAMES BLAKE: I don't know. 50th anniversary seemed like an appropriate time. I know the celebration of Jackie Robinson's 50th was a huge celebration. Maybe they got the idea from that. It's been said often that she's similar to the Jackie Robinson of tennis. Maybe at that ceremony they were inspired and realized they needed to do this in tennis as well. I don't know exactly what the reason is. I'm not a member of any of the boards that would have any say on it. If it was up to me, they'd have celebrations like that all the time. I just go out and play. Q. How did the J Block do today? JAMES BLAKE: They did pretty good, I think. They were a little more subdued, being a day match, which is good. A few of my -- surprised me. A few of my friends actually have real jobs. They have to be at work. They weren't as big as the night session might be. I'm sure they'll still get rowdier and rowdier if I keep going further and further. Q. Can you comment on Amer Delic? What does he need to do to complete his game? JAMES BLAKE: I think he had a tough draw. Lleyton is playing some of the best tennis in the world right now. He's got to be in the top five contenders for this title. Amer is someone that has a huge game. I think he just needs to put it together and be a little more consistent. I'm sure that's something people said about me when I was a little younger, too. He's got the ability, he can come up with shots once in a while, he can be a little more flashy, but he needs to do it week in and week out. He needs to put matches together. As long as Amer is working as hard as he can, being in great shape, I'm hoping it's going to come to a time when he's going to get to that breakthrough. That's where you need to be in great shape to deal with playing six or seven matches in a row, go to another tournament, play more, capitalize when you are playing well. I think he's a guy that has a big game. Those kind of guys can get on a roll. It's just a matter of keeping his head up and working hard. I think consistency is the biggest thing. End of FastScripts |
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