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By Pete Bodo
James Blake can sure use a good fall season, and the good news for his fans is that the surfaces are Blake-friendly. The players who stand to gain the most in the fall are those who need to make up lost ground, or newcomers whose games are sufficiently matured (Marin Cilic, anyone?) for them to think about padding their rankings and positioning themselves as contenders at the majors next year.
Blake's own position is a kind of sub-category that he shares with guys like Nikolay Davydenko, David Ferrer, Tommy Robredo and a few others. Those are all veterans under stress from younger, talented players stacked up below them. Blake's current ranking is no. 24 - if he's not careful, he may finish with his lowest year-end ranking since 2004). He's an established star here in the US, of course; he can go the rest of his career without winning another match and his name will still be familiar to legions, and he'll be able to capitalize and trade on it for the foreseeable future.
Yet players in his position always need to be somewhat leery about having transcended their identity. Tennis fans forget awfully fast, that's the price you pay in a game that also offers daily, instant gratification in the workplace. There comes a point when even the most successful and well-known of players suddenly realizes that his or her career may be over. Oh, he may tread water on the tour for another year or two; may even generate a few more headlines with a big win here or there. But it eventually becomes clear that the thing he does best, or did best - the thing that enabled him to become a personage - is something he can no longer hack.
And at that point, a sufficiently self-aware player is bound to wonder if he made the most of his opportunities. It's easy to get lost in the funhouse. In a sport that offers a new beginning just about every week, it's hard to see an end to the calendar. But in the end, you're left with a record. Will it have been good enough to make a few Grand Slam quarters (or semis, or, for that matter second rounds, for it's all relative)? Did you take advantage of every window of opportunity that opened, and pursue your career with a firm grasp of the demands as well as the rewards? Tennis is a game of constant reckonings; it explains why the game is so danged. . . dramatic.
Blake will be 30 at the end of this year. Frankly, I was surprised when I looked up his DoB, because I think of him as at least two or three years younger (and we all know that, in Boris Becker's famous construction, you measure a tennis player's life in dog years). There's a boyishness about Blake; it would be nice to have him around forever, because he's also a decent and thoughtful guy who's been a model professional.
But my feeling that Blake has time left to make another push to bag his first Masters 1000 title, or make a Grand Slam semi or final - maybe even deliver a huge, historic statement by taking a US Open title on that increasingly quick Arthur Ashe Stadium court, is being crowded by the unavoidable question: Can you still count Blake as a contender?
I don't know if Blake asks himself that discomfiting question; it can't be an easy one for a still-young man to pose to the mirror. But Blake has slipped pretty far, so the seeding regimen is starting to really work against him. He suffered first-round losses at two of the four majors this year (Roland Garros and Wimbledon), and lost all three live rubbers he played in Davis Cup.
Blake acquitted reasonably in Australia, although his straight-set loss in the fourth round to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga seemed a little too one-sided. Tsonga is the kind of guy a veteran like Blake has to hold at bay. And Blake missed a good opportunity by falling to Tommy Robredo in the third-round of the US Open. His best performances were runner-up efforts at Queens Club and Estoril, and you can even throw in that third-round loss to Roger Federer on the clay of Madrid (what does that tell you about the speed of court in that new Masters 1000 events?).
The most surprising thing about Blake's fall in status is that he doesn't appear to have, or lacks the ability to trade on, his presumed advantages as a seasoned top 10 pro. Maybe that's because he's always flourished with flash and flair, rather than guile and superior craftsmanship. He's playing a young man's game with a slowly aging body, which may make it difficult for him to tap into the residue of his experience.
Many of you are familiar with the colloquialism, Jump the Shark. Despite its flossy origins, it's a useful concept and it seems to have real applications in tennis. If Blake doesn't halt his present slide, I'll probably stick with the idea that he jumped the shark back in the summer of in 2007, when he lost the Los Angeles final to Radek Stepanek. I criticized Blake on this page after that loss (I said that if you're Blake, you just can't lose that match - not if you have higher aspirations than Blake had already realized).
When I next saw Blake, he let me know how he felt about my comment (it wasn't very good) analysis. Well, losing a match to a player of Stepanek's caliber is nothing to be ashamed about. But Blake's results since he missed that opportunity to win a significant title, on what can be described as a home court with all its attendant advantages, have been mediocre. He faltered in the fourth-round of the next US Open that summer, and hasn't been to a major quarterfinal since. The real question became not whether or not Blake can win a big one, but, Does he even care?
Apparently he does; that's probably one reason he recently finally decided to replace the only full-time coach he's ever had, Brian Barker (Kelly Jones has been traveling with Blake since the US Open). As Blake told Bonnie Ford of ESPN a few days ago: "(Brian and I are) still good friends, which will never change. Right now we both feel like I need to hear some things from a different voice. Kelly's been close to both of us for a long time, and he's a perfect fit for now. If things go well with him, everyone's happy. Brian wants nothing but the best for me. If they don't (work out), then I go back to Brian and we know there's a reason I'm back. It was just time to take a little break and see how it goes with someone else.''
Barker also downplayed the significance of the change: "I told him (Blake) that the most important thing in his tennis career is to have a clear head and peace of mind for the rest of your life that you did everything you possibly could to get better, maximize your potential and not leave anything on the table. He eventually agreed that was a good idea."
The coach also stressed that Jones doesn't represent a sea change, philosophy-wise. He said that Blake would be "hearing the same thing in a different way." I'm not sure if this was a vote of confidence in the way Barker and Blake approached tennis as much as an effort to short-circuit any notion that this change is like an SOS tapped out by a nearly tapped-out player. Blake might be better off hearing different things than he's heard all these years, like that he needs to modulate and diversify his game, that he needs to be more open to playing a more aggressive return game, or live or die less by his first serve.
In tennis, you learn never to underestimate a popular, successful 30-year old's sense of immortality. Blake is still a young guy who, except by the most exacting of athletic standards, is still approaching the peak of his general powers. Other opportunities have opened to him, and he's mature enough to know their value and have an interest in them (as in the case of his charitable work on behalf of cancer awareness). This is a guy who could have a career in politics (just read his press transcripts). But if he's coming into his own as a man and citizen, it's happening at a time when tennis is about to pass him by - an awkward case of ships passing in the night if ever there was one, and a legitimate source of worry.
Blake hasn't hit his peak, maybe not even in tennis. For there has to be some net loss or gain when you weigh the enthusiasm, impetuosity, and power of youth against the power of experience, and mental and emotional maturity. But you need to tap into those reservoirs of knowledge and experience, you need to be able to take advantage of what they have to offer in a direct way, in your game. But remember, Blake was a late bloomer as a tennis player; perhaps that also gives him a later "use-by" date. The real issue here is how to make the transition from young turk to savvy veteran.
Perhaps most of all, this probably is the time when Blake needs to ask himself, Do I still have one more push left in me? I have a feeling that he's done that; it would certainly help explain the late-career coaching change, and even the way Blake and Barker chose to handle it. Blake has always been prudent and tactful, qualities that have hurt as well as helped him. He's never really been a risk taker, although he's played a game based on taking risks.
I get the feeling that's what he most needs to do now: take some risks with his approach to the game, tell himself that the end of his career is near, it's time to pull out all the stops. Scaling back his relationship with Barker probably is a step in the right direction, but it's just a first step.