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
Those guys carried me through. I had a lot of tough three-set matches this week, and they were my legs in those third sets.
I guess I feel as good as I can feel, I fought my heart out. I had the crowd on my side for the first four matches unbelievably strong. To see how they reacted to him and see how much they wanted a champion like him to advance, it was great.
It's going to take time because no matter how good you are or how hard you've worked, there's no substitute for playing matches. I think he needs to get a few matches in, and then once he gets a little bit of confidence in match play, I think he's going to get that ranking right back up there.
It wasn't the cleanest of matches to be perfectly honest, but luckily five minutes after it's over it doesn't matter if it was the best performance you ever put on or you just scraped by. A win's a win. I'm allowed to play in the third round.
He made me earn it today. He's gotten me in so many close matches and beaten me up so many times.
We weren't sure if I was ever really going to be back to a 100 percent, if I was ever going to be back to this level again. I said whatever tournament I win, the next Grand Slam, you have to wear a gold tooth for the whole time I'm in the tournament.
I've never seen that called in my career.
I've never played well in Europe before but it's been great so far,
I've never played well in Europe before and it feels like I'm home again. I love it here. It's been great so far.
It was very important to me because half the tour is in Europe, ... I'm excited and it gives me confidence to know that I can win here. This is the first time I've had success in the European season. Other times I've kind of made my rankings just on the U.S. season and maybe down in Australia a little bit.
It was tough to watch. I kept thinking, 'I wonder how I'd be doing if I was there.' Now this year to go out there, it's just a great feeling.
It was tough conditions, I wanted to get ahead early but I couldn't quite do that. But I came through at the end of each set.
I served very well, and once you get rolling with one part of your game the rest of it follows, so it's a good feeling.
I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.