They say race is to the United States as class is to Britain and language is to Canada -- the cultural connotations of these national fault lines are tough for a non-native to comprehend.
It’s with that caveat I say all it means to me that Blake doesn’t have many black friends is he grew up in a predominantly white area and made friends with those around him.
To be honest, I think the simple fact – or complicated fact, depending on your point of view – is that skin colour simply doesn’t play a huge role in Blake’s life. For anyone with a white English mother and black American father, chances are it’s either a huge issue or almost a non-issue – the extremes are more likely than some sort of middle ground. That it was no big deal in Blake's case is probably a tribute to his family and the community he grew up in.
At the same time, he is aware of it, consciously wanting to be a role model for African American kids the way he looked up to Michel Jordan and Arthur Ashe.
In fact, for all the conflicts Blake always seems to have about what to do, he does appear very comfortable with who he is. I think it’s here that the comparison with Barack Obama is apt – they both wear their unconventional backgrounds with such ease that we tend to forget all about them.
Funnily enough, both appeared in the August 2006 issue of Men's Vogue. We know that Blake is an Obama supporter, but tennis publicist Randy Walker (The Outback Champions tour, New Chapter Press) learned last year that Obama is also a Blake fan, staying up well past midnight to watch him finally win a five-setter by beating Fabrice Santoro at the US Open.
(On a vaguely-related note, I also have to mention that Chris Clarey, voice of tennis and various other sports at the International Herald Tribune and New York Times, actually went to school with Obama in Hawaii, though he was a couple of grades younger.)
Still, it’s highly unlikely that any president will ever top the tennis connection owned by the current holder of the office, who was actually once caught driving drunk with John Newcombe in the passenger seat. Now what possessed John Newcombe to let himself be driven by a drunk George Bush is another story, but then again you could ask the same question of the whole country in the past few years.
Moving swiftly on from that unsettling thought, you made a very interesting point about Blake turning to his friends because he no longer had his father’s self-sufficiency to draw from. Maybe that’s what the shift really was, after all – not philosophical but psychological: his emotional outlook changed because who he got emotional support from changed.
We’ve talked about all the setbacks he’s rebounded from, but one thing Blake doesn’t get much credit for is how much he’s improved since he first came on tour, going from a prospective 20-30 type player to a solid Top 5-10 presence in the last couple of years.
Now that he’s no longer at a point where he can expect his game to get much better, is the way forward to use some tactical adjustments to become tougher to beat (“veteran wilyness”) or to increasingly try to win or lose on his own terms? He’s certainly got the footspeed to extend rallies, but also the forehand weapon to end points quickly.
He’s definitely opted for the latter course. There was a little discussion in the comments about my reference to Blake’s on-court mindset of “controlled aggression.” I used that specific phrase because I came across Blake calling it out to his coach in a stairwell during Toronto -- a perfect random snapshot. Actually, "controlled aggression" is a watering down of the ‘just go for it’ approach he was advocating for himself early in the year.
Personally, it makes a lot of sense. The go-for-broke mentality is usually the territory of young players rather than a relative veteran like Blake, but at this stage in his career he’s looking more for a few spectacular results than a whole set of consistent ones.
The interesting thing is that Blake mentally has to push himself to go for it, unlike someone like Fernando Gonzalez, who’s always itching to pull the trigger. And he’s definitely hostile to suggestions that he should sometimes pull back, even interpreting it as an instruction to become a pusher. E.g. after losing to Rafael Nadal at Indian Wells: “My game has to be aggressive to beat him. I've heard a million times so-called tennis insiders telling me to be more cautious. I've heard it on TV, I've heard it in papers, and it's almost laughable to me.”
On the other hand, Patrick McEnroe gave an interview during the French how he'd like to see Blake “tempering” his game: “James does well attacking the second serve, takes it so early and hits it so hard. In Davis Cup, we say, 'James, you'll win just as many points hitting it back to the middle of the court'... At 3-4, 30-all, with his opponent serving, instead of trying for a clean winner on the return, now he still hits it big but down the middle instead of the corner."
Which variation do you think he'll ultimately settle on. Steve, and how do you think his career will play out over the next few years?
*Kamakshi
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