In the lead-up to James Blake’s Nov. 28 Serving For A Cure fundraiser at NYC’s Lincoln Center, which benefits the Thomas Blake Sr. Memorial Research Fund, established to support cancer research, the former world No. 4 chatted with Inside Tennis about the power of giving back, his through-thick-and-thin journey in tennis, and playing smart at 31.
Blake, who opted to sit out the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris after a successful USTA Pro Circuit swing through California, is back inside the top 60 after having fallen to a six-year low of No. 173 in March.
INSIDE TENNIS: Andre Agassi has long talked about what tennis has enabled him to do away from the court, all the lives he’s touched through his preparatory academy. What has tennis done for your mission to raise funds for cancer research in your father’s name?
JAMES BLAKE: I agree with Andre. For me, tennis has been a vehicle. I hope what I’ve done with it off the court has been more important. It’s given me a voice to be able to do things like this. If I were sitting at a nine-to-five job in front of a computer, people wouldn’t be interested in the story because they wouldn’t have gotten to know me through my trials and tribulations on the court, through my book. There are things that go on in a pro athlete’s life besides what happens on the court. It’s given me a voice to be able to do this and to be relevant for people to make a connection with me and with my family. This endeavor has been very important, and that makes me want to keep it going. I thought it was going to be a one-time thing, but all my friends and family have made it continue. I’m really proud of that.
IT: You mention “trials and tribulations,” and you’ve certainly had your fair share – scoliosis, the broken neck, the shingles, the loss of your father to cancer and now the knee problems. But when you look back on your career over the past decade, are those tough moments what stick out the most for you?
JB: It’s been quite a journey. I definitely look at it as tons of ups and downs. I knew that going in. I was lucky enough to have Brian Barker coach me for so many years. We talked about it even before I turned pro, that there were going to be so many ups and downs, and that the best way to look at it was to try not to get too high or too low. He was so good when I was down at picking me up with memories of good times — times I was playing well and had confidence. When I was doing really well, he was sure to gently remind me that there is more to life and there are other things besides just winning tennis matches, and not to let it go to my head. Now I look back and it seems like 12 years has gone by very, very quickly. There’s been a ton of fun and obviously some tougher times. Being so competitive, I remember all the losses pretty vividly. Those aren’t fun, but they’re part of the journey. It’s been very exciting. I know most people don’t look back at 12 years of their career and have so many ups and downs, but that’s part of the job. I’m lucky to have so many fond memories.
IT: If the 31-year-old James Blake could give advice to the raw kid who broke into the pros out of Harvard, what would it be?
JB: I’d probably give the same advice that I got then, but I’d take it a little quicker. I’d take it a little more to heart, I hope. For one, preparing for the tour like it’s a sprint, not a marathon. If I had tried to pace myself just to get to 31, I don’t think I would have made it. I needed to give everything I had in every match, in every practice, to go out there and know that I’m doing my best on that day. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, when you’re going to break your neck, when you’re going to get sick, when you’re going to have a knee injury, a shoulder injury. You really need to go out there and give 100 percent each time and let the chips fall where they may. I got that advice. Some of the other advice I’d tell myself is to have a short memory. It took me a long time to get that, and I still really work on that. That was something Pete Sampras told me. He was one of the best at it. If you have a bad practice, it’s out of your mind. If you have a bad match, you put it out of your mind as quickly as possible and gain that confidence back. At 31, I’m still probably not one of the best guys on tour at that. I’m better at 31 than I was at 22, but I wish the 22-year-old me could have learned that quicker.
IT: When we spoke in San Jose last February, you seemed like a guy who was ready to embrace retirement, someone who was comfortable heading into the next phase of his life. But when we talked in September at the U.S. Open, you seemed like a different person, someone who clearly had his eyes on remaining a competitive force over the next couple of years.
JB: I know how that seemed with how I was feeling in San Jose, but the only thing I can say is that I’m really listening to my body. In San Jose, it wasn’t telling me good things. I was a little distraught. It was a tough time with how my knee was feeling. At the Open, this whole summer, it was feeling good. I’ve been working a lot with my trainer and therapist. My trainer has assured me that there are going to be some times when the knee is feeling good, and there are going to be times when it feels bad. Tendinitis flares up pretty bad. You’ve just got to roll with the punches. In San Jose, I was a little discouraged by it because I really hadn’t had many days when it felt good. I’ve always thought throughout my career that it will be my body that forces me to retire before my mind. I love competing. I don’t see an end to that competitive nature. I don’t see a chance of me not feeling like being out on the court anymore. What I see most is my abilities not being there, my feeling of not being able to compete at the top level because my body can’t do it anymore. My body can’t do what my mind wants it to do. At that point in San Jose, I really thought that my body was starting to tell me that. I’m lucky that it’s been getting better and I’ve been on a pretty good upswing. I’m looking forward to next year. Who knows — it might not be great in January and by the time you see me in San Jose again next year I might be discouraged because my knee’s been bad for two straight months and I don’t have visions of it getting better. But there’s a chance that it’ll be feeling great and I’ll be looking forward to San Jose and Memphis and Indian Wells and Miami and everything throughout the whole year, enjoying playing those one more time or two more times or three more times. I just want to enjoy it at the time and we’ll see how long my body lets me do this.
IT: Jim Courier recently gave your pal Andy Roddick some advice, telling him to downshift a bit when it comes to his practice schedule, his tournament schedule, in order to elongate his career. You’ve talked about that, too, about how you need to be smart at this point in your career and choose your events wisely. But it’s kind of a catch-22, isn’t it? When you’re not playing, you’re falling behind.
JB: At Andy’s age, at my age, we’re able to do that a lot quicker. I remember when I was a kid and I hit with Mats Wilander, a former No. 1 and an unbelievable player, when he was coming back to the tour. He was probably in his early 30s, and I was really amazed at the time he could take off because his body needed it. When he came back the first day, as a 17-year-old kid, I was beating up on him. The next day, the improvement was so quick. The third day, he was back to being the player who I recognized, a top-50 player already. He was able to come back quicker because he had logged so many hours of practice over the years. Maybe it’ll take me a couple of matches here and there, a little bit of time, but it comes back so much quicker with what we’ve built up in our arsenals in terms of matches, practices and the millions and millions of balls that we’ve hit. I think we do need to train smarter, to be smarter about how many events we play, but if we take a few off that we wouldn’t be able to do when we were 23 or 24 because we need that time to get prepared, it’s okay for us. Jim’s right — you need to be smarter. You can’t just beat up your body for no reason. You can’t play an event that doesn’t have a purpose — one that you have fond memories of, or even better, one that’s preparing you for an even bigger event. We have to be honest. At our age, Andy and I probably aren’t going to compete to win the French Open. We’re probably not going to compete to win on slow red clay. We’re probably not favorites in those kinds of tournaments. Maybe you take it a little bit easier during that season and don’t play as many events on the slow red stuff and focus a little more on the grass, on the hard-court season, when you can be a little more of a threat, even without as much match practice.
IT: There was a lot of talk at the Open about the players having more of a voice, sharing a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to revenues. How closely have you been watching the NBA situation, and do you think the ATP Tour needs to become more of what it was originally founded as — a players union?
JB: I’ve been watching the NBA thing, but I’ve been watching it as a fan. I miss basketball. I want to see the guys play. It’s unfortunate that it’s come to what it is. I hope they still have a season this year. I don’t watch it with any comparisons to the ATP. It’s so different. With the individuality of our sport, it’s so unique. When you have an individual sport, there are so many people who want so many different things. It’s very difficult to get a union and get everyone on board with the same thing. Yeah, everyone’s on board with more money. I don’t think anyone’s going to turn that down. Of course we want more money, more prestige at every event. It’s the way to get it that could be different and could be difficult. The tournaments want to make money, too. It needs to be fair. I think the players deserve a large piece of that because they are the entertainment. They’re the ones who are putting on the show, and I’m one of them. But I just think it’s very difficult to get all the players on the same page, to get all the players thinking exactly the same. That’s why it’s been nearly impossible for us to get any sort of a union. I hope we do get some sort of unity, where we can go to the Slams and really make a serious pitch, an informed pitch. We have a great board with Justin Gimelstob, who was a player just a few years ago, who knows what it means to the players and knows what our wish-list is, what we want to get done. He’s a very good voice for us. We need to rely on the people we voted into that position. We need to make sure they’re the ones who are doing the work. As much as we’re informed, we’re not informed as much as the board members. That’s their entire job, and our job is to go out and work on getting better and putting on the best show we can. We have to trust those who we voted in.
For more information on Serving For A Cure, which will be emceed by actor Justin Long, and feature a musical performance by Rolling Stone Artist to Watch Brett Dennen, as well as an appearance by Jim Courier, visit www.jamesblakefoundation.com or call (305) 461-9296.
