PACIFIC LIFE OPEN

March 14, 2003

James Blake

JAMES BLAKE: That's tennis for you. I feel like -- I actually didn't feel like I played that great in the first set to win it. I think I just kept him off balance and didn't give him a whole lot of rhythm. He got into the match, started playing better. I never picked up my game. I'm pretty disappointed the way I played that first and second set. The third set I definitely thought I could have played better. I just didn't have it today.

JAMES BLAKE: Well, he put a lot more returns in, which is something he needed to do. He didn't do as well in the first set. He was just putting returns in and making me play. That's were I need to step up and beat him as opposed to just letting him beat himself, which a player like that's not going to do. Yeah, he definitely played better, but I never played any better, which is disappointing to me.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, my serve totally let me down. But it's going to happen on some days. Unfortunately, it happened today in a bigger match for me against a tougher player where I couldn't use the rest of my skills to get around that fact.

JAMES BLAKE: He mixed it up a little better. In the first set, maybe set and a half, he seemed like he was maybe going strictly to my backhand, T on the deuce, out wide to the ad. I think he saw me hitting on it a little bit, started mixing it up better. I didn't have the first step just knowing where I was going. I had to guess or I was just caught off balance. So he did a better job of that.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah. I was -- that was a little frustrating with someone standing that can see exactly where a ball is hit a hundred miles an hour when it's all the way on the baseline pretty far from him. I understand they're there to overrule clear mistakes. If that ball was in, it was in by maybe a millimeter. For someone to say they can see that is pretty much ridiculous to me. From that distance, you really can't even see a stationary ball exactly where it hits. It's a little frustrating, but he made his judgment call. I've got to stick with it and move on. I probably let it hang around in my head for that next couple of points, and shouldn't have done that. But after that I definitely got past it and still couldn't do anything to change the outcome.

JAMES BLAKE: Strategy was to not give him much rhythm. He obviously plays so well on clay, he does great when he gets into rallies. The more balls he hits in a rally, I feel like he's even better. He gets that rhythm, he hits the ball so well then. I was going to try to go for a little bit more, maybe flatten it out every once in a while, put pressure on him by going in. I definitely did that, but then I started getting a little out of that by going for a little too much. I was missing a little bit, being too tentative. When I got a little tentative, he got his confidence because that's where he got his rhythm. It's a little unfortunate. I'd liked to have played a little better.

JAMES BLAKE: Uh-huh, yeah, he was really pumped up, which I didn't really understand. He's definitely been there before. You know, he's won three French Opens. For him to get that fired up to get the third break in a third set in the quarterfinals of Indian Wells, I didn't understand. But, you know, that's his personality. You know, he gets really excited for these kind of matches, I guess. You know, a night match, the crowd was into it. So, yeah, he was wired. That definitely helped him. Looked like he got excited, definitely started playing better. Can't fault him for that. Too good.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah. I feel like they're relatively similar players. I was trying to keep both of them off balance and try to attack both of them. So I was hoping to play pretty similar, you know, possibly even better. But it didn't happen. I don't know why. It's tough to explain. Maybe I wasn't moving my feet as well. I'll talk to my coach and figure out what I need to do to work on not letting this happen again.

JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, it's pretty frustrating. But also if I were to have someone tell me a year ago, two years ago, that I could be, you know, knocking with this kind of potential, you know, very close to really breaking through, but still making quarterfinals of a Masters Series, fourth rounds of Slams, I'd be pretty happy. I'd say I'll take it in a heartbeat, just to take this frustration. It's something my coach and I have talked about since I was about 17 years old. When I would lose in the finals of Nationals, he would say, "It hurts really bad. But the more it hurts, the better you're doing, because that means it means something, it's getting more important." As I'm getting better and better, the losses are hurting more and more because they are for something important, you know, they're for a semifinal berth in a Masters Series, they're for bigger things, bigger points, you know, greater rewards. So it's very frustrating, but I try to take that as a positive because that means, you know, I'm getting close.