James Blake
James Blake
James Riley Blakeis an American retired professional tennis player. Blake is known for his speed and powerful, flat forehand. During his career, Blake had amassed 24 singles finals appearances, while his career-high singles ranking was World No. 4. His career highlights included reaching the final of the 2006 Tennis Masters Cup, the semifinals of the Beijing Olympics and the quarterfinals of the Australian Openand US Open, as well as being the former American No. 1. His two titles for the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTennis Player
Date of Birth28 December 1979
CountryUnited States of America
It was fun to compete; I generally don't have a lot of fun losing, but this was a whole lot of fun playing. This is incredible.
It was exciting for me to go farther than I ever have in a grand slam,
I want to go out there and find out how good I am playing my own game.
I wanted to make sounds that I'd never heard before.
I want everybody to tune in, ... people who are tennis fans and people who aren't tennis fans, and we'll give them a good show and do it the right way.
It took a while for the fans to warm to Pete Sampras,
It will definitely be fun if I get a chance to play him. We have some sort of a history in the fact that we've had a few five-setters, some really close matches.
That first set was definitely not his best tennis and I didn't expect that to continue but sometimes it's tough to pick your game up when someone has such a bad set and then they pick their game up, ... I really didn't want it to go to three sets because I knew how well he was starting to play and he can really get rolling. It was a great match and a great tiebreaker at the end.
Its amazing how good you feel after you win. Six months ago, I never would have had the maturity to come back. I got through it.
It's amazing that people are still doing that. I actually think Guillermo is a really nice guy. He's a great competitor. I thought he got the most out of his talent, and that's something I was always impressed with. I don't know all the details, but I guess unfortunately, he might have been doing something else to get more out of his talent.
It looked like Rafael was getting a little upset towards the end of the match noticing that my fans were pretty vocal, ... I'm proud that they never make it personal and they never do anything too negative toward the other player...maybe it helps that it was during the day and they maybe didn't have quite as many Heinekens today. That helps, I think.
It was impressive to watch him on the courts of the French Open, ... Let's hope it is different here in New York.
It's a good feeling when they're on your side. We travel the world, so it's very seldom that we're in our home town.
It's a great feeling just to come out and be healthy,