from The Mirror

6/24/02

GHETTO MASTER;
From the mean streets of New York to the leafy lanes of Oxford.. James Blake just wants respect.

Byline: KEVIN GARSIDE

IT MUST be something to do with water in Oxfordshire. Like Tim Henman, James Blake's roots lie deep in the quintessentially English county. He is unfailingly polite, well mannered and, according to the rankings, hits a tennis ball better than all but the top 36 players in the world. Unlike Tim Henman, Blake grew up with bars protecting the windows and doors of his Yonkers home. He learned to play not on the lawns of his father's garden but the concrete of Harlem, where his ex-serviceman dad was a volunteer coach. Blake, whose mother Betty was born and bred in Banbury, is the ghetto kid who escaped the privations of his youth to fashion a life for himself in tennis. He is to the men's game, potentially at least, what the Williams sisters are to the women's, without the eccentricity.

This week the 22-year-old contests a singles match at Wimbledon for the first time. It is to be hoped that the All England club is tuned in because the mixed-race boy with the model looks could do as much for it as the tournament does for him. Blake came to everybody's attention at the US Open last year when his second round opponent Lleyton Hewitt made a racially fuelled observation to the umpire after being foot-faulted twice by a black line judge. Brilliant "Look at him and tell me what the similarity is," said Hewitt pointing to the common ethnicity of Blake and the official. The official was removed and Hewitt went on to win the match and the tournament. He did not, however, win any admirers. Blake stole all of them with his adroit handling of an explosive situation.

Nine months on he arrives at Wimbledon with a career-high ranking of 37, 49 places higher than his 2001 year-end rating, an IMG modelling contract and a future as bright as any African-American in tennis since Malivai Washington and Arthur Ashe. "I realise that there might be people showing interest in my matches who might otherwise have no interest in tennis," he said. "I see it with the Williams sisters. They bring a whole new demographic to tennis events which I think is brilliant. "It's a little bit of pressure on me but that just means it is more meaningful, an opportunity to do something great in life. I take the role model business seriously. I try to behave on the court and not give kids another spoiled professional athlete with a bad attitude to look at.

"I want them to be proud to say they want to be like me and not have their parents cringe when they say that. If I can be a positive role model that would be something to cherish." If Blake plays half as well as he looks and speaks over the next fortnight, Henmania will not be the only condition sweeping through SW19, especially when Centre Court twigs that it is cheering one of its own. Blake is as proud of his British roots as he is his American background.

He paid his first visit to Banbury with his mother last year while competing in the doubles at Wimbledon. It was, he says, a moving experience for both. "I got to see where my mom grew up and where all her stories came from. I'm really glad I did that. It was very exciting for me and emotional for her. She has some distant relatives still in the Banbury area. We went into the pub and people knew her name," he said. "I grew up in America and feel that is where my loyalty lies. But I did connect with Oxfordshire.

The most emotional moment was when I went to see my grandmother's grave and saw where she grew up." A little different no doubt than his own experience in Yonkers, not one of New York's more revered post codes, where Blake lived until the family moved up the east coast of America to respectable Connecticut. "I was raised in Yonkers till I was six. I thought it was pretty normal to have bars on the doors and windows and not be allowed to cross the street on your own. In Connecticut it was a nice change. You could almost leave your door open and have nothing happen. "Just after we left the Yonkers there was one of the biggest drug busts in New York history on the street where we lived. While we were there our house was broken into four times.

"I remember coming home once with my brother and everything was a mess, and a couple of my toys were gone. But I thought that was a normal thing to happen. I still had my stick ball and a couple of other things to play with and just got on it." The stick became a tennis racket with which he got on very well. Well enough in fact to quit Harvard University after two years in 1999 to concentrate fully on tennis. As a boy in Yonkers Blake never expected life's twists and turns to deposit him in south west London in June at the epicentre of the tennis world.

But he is here on merit, despite the disappointment of a first round defeat at Queens last week, and looking forward to making the right impression on and off the court. "It's going to be a new experience for me. I feel like it will be similar to the US and French for the first time. "It has so much tradition. I grew up watching it, seeing Pete Sampras, one of my idols, winning it so many times. When I'm old and grey it will be great to look back on, something to be proud of. Wimbledon is timeless. Very impressive. I hope to have some success here, to gain some respect on Centre Court."

As the Hewitt affair showed, there are more important issues than winning and losing at tennis. A quiet word, man-to-man, with Hewitt, who denied that his outburst was racially motivated, in the locker-rooms afterwards was as far as it went for Blake. You cannot respect a kid in his position enough for a response like that. CAPTION(S): PLAYING STRAIGHT:

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