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SONY ERICSSON OPENApril 2, 2008James BlakeMIAMI, FLORIDA THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. How would you compare this match to the one in Indian Wells? JAMES BLAKE: This one was a little more disappointing. Last week I feel like I played my game. Just didn't play it well enough last week. This week I felt like I played my game for a while, and then I got a little indecisive. I felt like I wasn't volleying very well, and I think that affected me because it made me a little more passive. I wasn't attacking as much. And then once I did that I was so indecisive, I didn't know how much to go for, when to go for it, and I got a little too passive and let him dictate play. The way he was hitting his forehand, he was about being aggressive with it. He was doing everything he could in terms of his footwork to hit a ton of forehands. He did that. And it's much more disappointing when you feel like you don't necessarily play your game and go down the way you want to. Not that you ever want to go down, but if you do, you want to play your game. Today I felt like towards the end of the match I was playing much, much too passive, and that's frustrating. Something to learn from and something I'll think about for the next whatever, eight or nine days till I got to play Davis Cup. Q. Even though he hit those break points he didn't convert it. Ground you down a bit. Seemed like you were walking on the edge a bit. JAMES BLAKE: Well, I think it would have helped me a lot mentally if I could have come back and saved all those and then holding. It can wear you down mentally if you don't convert on those. The one he did convert on early in that third set, I had an overhead to put to the open court and didn't do it. He just guessed right. Sometimes it's one of those days where you're guessing wrong, he's guessing right. He did it on a big point and then I had an a open volley that I put into the net. Took my eye off it. Like I said, I was losing confidence in those volleys, and something for the next week and a half on the practice court. Q. When did it change? Because after the first set, I mean, it looked like you were really in control. What happened there? JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, I don't know. Umm, I guess sometimes they say the heat can affect your mind, too. Maybe it got to my head. I don't know. I really -- maybe I was up and feeling good about it like you said and just then got passive. I really don't know, and it's frustrating when that happens. That's why I say this one is much more disappointing than last week. Q. Did you ever at any point consider smashing yourself three times in the head with a tennis racquet? JAMES BLAKE: I saw that. That was pretty funny. Not for Mikhail, I'm sure. I saw that the other say. My strings are strung way too tight. If I hit myself just with the strings I'd be bleeding. Mardy Fish does that. He punches the strings and ends up bleeding on his knuckles. I did that as a kid and I kind of stopped doing that. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Q. Youzhny got over half a million hits on YouTube. JAMES BLAKE: Maybe I should -- maybe I'll get more popular. No, I don't think it's worth it. Q. We know, because you've said it to us many times, one of the things you fought against as you've gotten older is the tendency to get down and stay down. Was that something where you just weren't executing on the court? JAMES BLAKE: It's tough to say. I think this -- like I said, this is much more disappointing in terms of right now. But maybe in a couple days, if I just had one good practice where I go out there and I'm playing my game, executing on the volleys, doing everything I need to do, I will feel like I can put this behind me pretty quickly. It was a day when I was just too passive and thing of it that way instead of beating myself up about it. Right now I will beat myself up about it, but that's because it's just after. I usually give myself about one night to be a little angry at myself, and then I'll get over it tomorrow and hopefully be okay. But I think the change of venue going to the Davis Cup indoors where you almost have to play aggressive with the speed of the court that we're going to make it, I think that will help me. It will just force me into a pretty simple game plan where I know what I need to do. Last year at this time I was pretty down and a lot of people brought that up in every press conference, and I went there and I played one of my favorite matches of my career. It was against Robredo, who is an excellent player, and I beat him in straight sets to show people that I wasn't just -- I wasn't done with my career, I wasn't faltering, I wasn't doing anything wrong. I just had a couple of bad days. You know, if I have to go there and prove again it was just a bad day, then so be it. But I don't feel like it's that embarrassing to go out and lose twice in a row to Rafael Nadal. As I said, I played passive. Once I did that, he played aggressive, being the intelligent player he is. His forehand was just locked in today. I'm going to beat myself up for an hour or so maybe tonight, and hopefully I'll be over it very quickly and ready for Davis Cup. Q. Is there a physical solution to dealing with him? Staying with him? Staying in the match all the way through? Is it the kind of thing maybe with some different training technique or whatever, you could... JAMES BLAKE: If there's way to train my mind not to be so passive, I felt like I was doing well in the first set. I've had, in general, success against him on hardcourts. Last two times it wasn't, but both were pretty close matches. It could have hinged on a couple of points. I don't think anything needs to be changed. That's one thing that won't get me down, that won't say I need to revamp my whole game plan, which is where I think a lot of guys do get into trouble. They have a couple bad losses and they think they need to change coaches, they need to change their game style. They think they need to change everything. Where if I get a little lucky on a couple points here or there, I just played a little smarter for a little longer, I feel like I could have won be this match. You never know. Obviously Rafa can play to the end. I don't want to change anything. If anything, I'd love to go out there and play again and play a little smarter and take my chances a little more. I might lose, I might win, but it's my best game. That's what I'm sure of by now. At 28 years old, playing on tour for as long as I have, I know what my best game plan is. It's not a question anymore. It's not going back to changing everything to serving and volleying all the time, to staying back, to playing defensively, to completely changing my training to where I'm going to go out and run in the sand for five hours a day. I know how much is too much. I've done trial and error for a long time. I've overtrained at times, and I've undertrained at times. I've done everything. I've done everything that I need to do to find out what the best solution is for me, and I've come to that conclusion. It was with the help of Brian Barker and Mark Merklein, and it feels good to know, to go out there and know what I'm doing. Then it's no one's fault but my own to go out there and not execute on a given day. Those guys are not to blame. It was me that went out there and just didn't follow through on all the hard work. Q. Correct me if I'm wrong, in both these matches your level seemed to decline, even physically your body language and stuff as you got deep into the match and toward the end. You know, that's what it looked like from the stands. JAMES BLAKE: I'll correct you when you're wrong. I think you were wrong. Because I think a lot -- like we said yesterday when we talked about Rafa's desire and his will to win and everything he does, and his fist pumping and all that kind of stuff -- well, I said it yesterday: Every single person out here has that. They just don't express it the same way. If I were to go out there and show that much emotion it would be detrimental to me. I know that. I've had times where I've looked down -- I mean, if you look back at the tape where I was playing Sebastien Grosjean and down two sets to Love, I'm sure commentators and media people were already writing their story that I looked like my expression was down, I wasn't ready. In my head I'm fighting till the end, and whether or not it looks like it or not, that was always the plan. I said it yesterday, I said it today, I always feel like I can win. And I will win. Today I didn't, but I have to go on that. It's just different ways of expressing that. You know, to me, I take all the criticism and accolades with a kind of a grain of salt. But it does irk me a little bit when it's something that people feel like they see, and when they see that they think they know me. It's something that it's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, because even when I was young, when my coach would say something like that -- he knows better now it since we've been together long enough -- but he knows not to say the way I'm feeling or anything, because it's kind of frustrating to me. If I was coaching someone I would never tell them how they're feeling or tell them what they should feel or anything. That's very personal, and I felt like I could win today the whole time, and I didn't. But it wasn't that I was down. I mean, I honestly -- if anyone wants to, I can put my shoes back on and go out and play three more sets. It's not physical. It's the fact that he beat me down mentally. He played more aggressive. I played too passive. It has nothing to do with my training, because I was ready to go. Q. Patrick McEnroe was just named today Director of Elite Player Development by the USTA. You see him working with young players, practice partners on the Davis Cup team. What makes him good for the job, and are you concerned at all that he's getting spread too thin? He has a lot of roles. JAMES BLAKE: Umm, I hope he's not getting spread too thin. I don't want to kind of downplay his role as the Davis Cup captain because I know how much it takes, but we all do have our own coaches when we go there. We're all -- you know, by now we're all adults and we've done this many times. I feel like we try to make it easy on him in terms of the Davis Cup captain role. As commentating, I know it takes some effort. This is going to take a lot of time. I know that. I don't know if he's going to cut back on commentary or what, but the USTA has programs and they want to improve the junior programs. We see the talent, the young talent, coming out of places like France and Spain. America has so much talent and resources that we should be competing in those juniors. I think it's time to take a step to fix that. I don't know exactly all the ins and outs of the whole USTA, but I have a feeling Patrick McEnroe, if he's at the head of something, he's going to take charge and make the decision that needs to be made. We've seen it on the Davis Cup. We've seen when he's definitely a players' captain, someone that will go to bat with the ITF or whoever to say this is what the players need. So I think he's going to hopefully do a lot of research, and I think that would be the first thing I'd do if I was ever in that position. I have a feeling it will be what he's going to do, is ask a lot of questions. Find out what's been done, what's worked, what hasn't worked, what kids are coming up, what they need to do, and I think he's going to -- the same as he did with Davis Cup captain: He learned very quickly. I think he's going to do that and then put that knowledge to good use. Q. How about Andy's match tomorrow with Roger? How do you see that? You've gotten to see Andy here. JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, I practiced with Andy, actually practiced with both of them. They both beat me up pretty badly. We'll see who beat me up worse. No, they're both playing really well. They're both enjoying their time here in Miami. They both won it, so I'm sure they have a lot of confidence going into it. I think it's going to be a fun one. The guys have played so many times, but I feel like Andy's got some confidence going right now the way he played in Dubai. One bad match in Indian Wells I don't think affected him. Maybe just riding on Cloud 9 so well with his recent news off the court that he'll take that and go into this match just fine. You know, he's going to have a lot of energy and Roger is going to be Roger. He's going to be exceptional. He's going to do some things that you need to see to believe. I think it will come down to a really close match that will hinge on one or two points. It's going to be a very fun one to watch. It should be -- it's unfortunate it's a quarter, because I think both these guys can and are playing well enough for it to be a final. Q. Speaking about Patrick McEnroe, how would you describe him as a man and as a captain? JAMES BLAKE: As a man, that might take a while. I maybe don't know him well enough, but as Davis Cup captain he's great. Like I said, it took him a little bit to learn right at the beginning because he hadn't done a ton of coaching. Once he learned -- and I think one of the biggest things to learn as a coach is sometimes what not to say. Because sometimes you come in and have a million ideas and you want to say them all, and it could affect the players possibly negatively. He's done a great job now of knowing how to convey his messages, how to get across all the things he wants to say. It may be a shorter amount of words and just being able to relax a little more on the court, and he's done a good job of also tailoring what needs to be done for each player instead of having one coaching style. Because I don't think any one coach should be able to use the same style for 10 players, say. And Andy and myself are almost opposite when we're on the court. So he needs to be a little more talkative, little more just dynamic while he's on the court with Andy. With me, I'm a little more calm, little more relaxed, so he needs to, I don't know, maybe just calm down. He's not going to go as crazy there and just sit and we can have a kind of a civil conversation, as opposed to Andy's hyper talks. So it's fun to see that he has gotten a lot better at that, and he's done a great job in learning and set aside his ego and done everything he can for the players. End of FastScripts |
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