First off, let’s get one thing straight, Blake is without a doubt my favorite tennis player.  I grew up one age division behind him in New England Juniors, competed against many of the same players, and as a result, I probably have plenty of indirect wins over him- making me, indirectly, one of the best tennis players around.  It’s been a thrill watching him progress through the years, struggle with all he went through a couple years back, all culminating (so far anyways) in ending 2006 as the best U.S. player, and winning more tournaments than anyone last year besides Federer or Nadal.  However, there has been much written recently, and there will be more after his loss yesterday to 103 ranked Ivo Karlovic, of Blake’s seemingly inability to come through in the clutch and win when it matter’s most.  His inability to win 5-setters is shocking, and he has not come through lately in Davis Cup, losing most recently to Berdych, and last year to Youhzny and Gonzalez.  And ever since his captivating 5-set loss to Agassi in the quarters of the 2005 US Open, the expectations for his Grand Slam results have risen, but he has failed to produce. Or has he?

I think it’s incredibly unfair to simply claim a player is not living up to expectations without looking at things with a bit more detail.  In the last five Grand Slams he has lost to the following players, starting with the 2006 Australian Open- Tommy Robredo, Gael Monfils, Max Miryni, Roger Federer, and Fernando Gonzalez.  At the time, Robredo was ranked ahead of him and was expected to win that match.  I was lucky enough to see the Monfils-Blake match live on Court 1 at the French and it was far and away the most entertaining match I’ve seen, and I think if that match were played ten more times, Blake would be lucky to win one of them.  Monfils was on fire, and had thousands of Parisians screaming “GA-EL” after every single point.  I think I was one of five Blake fans that managed to get into the stadium, and that was because I suffered through an awful match beforehand to secure my seat. The loss to Miryni was a terrible one, even though the gentle giant’s serve was helped out by the slick grass, especially considering he would’ve played Bjorkman next, who of course made it to the semifinals.  Then of course came the quarterfinal loss to Federer in New York (a match in which Blake managed to win his first career set of the greatest player of all time), before losing to Gonzalez in the fourth round of the Australian this year, who of course steamrolled through the draw before he was steamrolled by Federer.  The point I’m trying to make here is that Blake, with the exception of Miryni, is not exactly getting wiped off the court by people who he should be beating every time.  Has he come through on the big stage yet? No. Will he in the (near) future? I for one, think the answer is yes.

One more note on the current status of U.S. Mens Tennis, I think the so called demise of our nation’s tennis superstars is a bit drastic.  Yes, obviously things are not what the were in the mid 90’s, when Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang and Martin were all consistently ranked inside the top 15, but we still have two players in the top 6 in Blake and Roddick, with both Fish and Ginepri seeming to find their games again.  We have two young guns with Sam Querrey and the much talked about Donald Young, who by the way is finally doing things the right way and gaining some confidence on the challenger circuit.  And I can promise you that there are plenty of kids out there itching to take over the reigns, we just haven’t heard of him yet.  To me, people complaining about the lack of starpower in U.S Men’s tennis is somewhat greedy, it’s like Yankee fans complaining about a six year – and hopefully soon to be seven year – drought of World Series titles after winning 26 of the previous 75.  I think the status of U.S. Mens Tennis is good, but more importantly the overall status of tennis is great.

Links:

Sharapova named UN Ambassador, without the help of coaching from the sidelines.

Nice article on two American Coaches.

Another entertaining blog from Peter Bodo.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Grand Slam General Questions, Tennis News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.