Post-Match Press Conference from Round 2 Loss at 2003 French Open

Q. Were you still rattled from the line call from last night?
JAMES BLAKE: No. That had nothing to do with it. It was one bad call. That's gonna happen a lot in matches. I definitely forgot about it and didn't think about it last night. I was thinking about how I was playing and the match was played at a pretty high level yesterday.
Today at times it was, for that one set I just made way too many errors at the end there. He's a guy that, you know, takes you out of your rhythm. He doesn't give you much rhythm at all.
Two matches on clay, I got about zero rhythm, which is pretty frustrating. Playing two huge servers. You know, one's a serve and volleyer, the other one just goes for winners as early as he can.
So that took me out of my game and so when it got down to crunch time, I didn't have the same confidence in my shots like I usually do.

Q. What was your strategy going in? You played him recently on a much different surface.
JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, well strategy was to, you know, see what I could do about getting his serve back; obviously that's going to be huge on any surface. Take my rips at his second serve. I didn't do that as well as I would liked to have. I missed too many. A few of them I just pushed when I should have gone for a little more.But then on my serve, it was play solid games, don't try to do anything, you know, overly creative. Don't, you know -- just play as much as I can, my forehand to his forehand. But keep him honest on the backhand. Just keep him deep, making it tougher for him to rip those winners.
He's gonna try to hit winners no matter where he is, if he's on the run or if he's inside the baseline. So make it more difficult for him and push him back. I did that a lot of the times, but his serve, being as good as it is, it puts kind of an inadvertent pressure on you to do that every single time. I wasn't able to do that.

Q. What do you make of the only remaining Americans are all 28 or older in the tournament?
JAMES BLAKE: I'm very happy for those guys. I'm very disappointed that I'm not in the third round. I had a pretty bad clay court season. It was really upsetting. I guess all the media were right, maybe Americans aren't doing so well on clay.
But I'm pretty sure I'm going to do a lot better next year. This is a disappointing end to the clay court season. I had a few tough losses, and I'm pretty bummed about the clay court season. You know, I got to look forward to just getting on the grass and the hard. But I'm already right now looking forward to the clay court season next year because I know I'm gonna do better and I know I'm gonna have some more success.

Q. Can you take that a step further, James. I mean, is it frustrated, pissed, angry? Got to look at the nature of your clay court game?
JAMES BLAKE: Right now it's disappointed. I played badly in Rome, I didn't play so badly in Hamburg. I was okay in Dusseldorf, had some tough matches. Those were matches that had a lot more rhythm to them, and I got some confidence on clay and then coming here and getting rhythm, that was tough.
I know next year I'm going to be better prepared for these situations. I'm going to be very ready for the clay court season next year. Right now, I had looked forward to this clay court season because everyone had been saying that the younger Americans aren't going to do well on clay. We still haven't had success since Andre won it here and since Courier did so well on clay.
But I guess I'll have one more chance this year in Davis Cup, I think. Slovakia is going to play it on clay. Then after that I really want to get looking forward to this part of the year next year.

Q. It's obviously great that you had this hunger, this attitude, "Let me at the clay again." But what can you and the young Americans in general do to turn the slide around? Excuse the play on words.
JAMES BLAKE: Well, just being a little more prepared. In the off-season, we're pretty much always hitting on hard courts. I'm gonna change that this year, I think, to just a couple times a week. When I have that much time off and I'm practicing really hard and working on a bunch of different things, maybe take two days out of the week and hit on clay, just so I remember how to do it so it's not so brand new when I start up in March or April or whenever the clay court season starts. I'm gonna try to make sure I remember how to slide and remember how to construct points on the clay and just feeling a little more comfortable on it. And then I don't think there's anything tactically wrong in my game on clay, I just haven't been as patient as I should have been at times, and hopefully with age that's gonna come.
I think it's more than just age; it's more playing these matches and feeling this kind of disappointment and this kind of pain right now that is gonna make me more patient and make me realize that I might have to suffer a little more on the court to really work through the points to get the victories.

Q. I want to expand on that. Do you think the idea of not practicing enough on clay, do you think this expands to all your contemporaries?
JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, I'm gonna do it at Saddlebrook. I hope Mardy Fish is there doing the same thing. We'll even try to get Andy over there once in a while. Any of the guys, I'd probably suggest it to. I think some of the coaches have suggested it. I'm gonna take them up on it this year.

Q. When you guys get together, do you talk about this, do you guys ever say, "God, this is embarrassing. Why can't we get it together on clay," with Mardy and everybody else?
JAMES BLAKE: Yeah, I mean, try not to bring up the fact that it's embarrassing to each other, but, yeah, I mean, we definitely -- before the Davis Cup tie last year, coming over here, we wanted to prove that we could play on clay. I think we actually did play pretty well here in the Davis Cup. We played two guys who were playing unreal in Sebastien and Arnaud.
But we showed we can contend with those guys and we talk about it at times. We don't -- I mean, it's not a topic of conversation all the time. We try to get away from tennis when we can. But when we're practicing on the stuff, we definitely are looking forward to proving people wrong. You know, a lot of people have been hyping this young generation - Andy, myself, Mardy, Taylor - saying we're gonna do great things. It's rare to hear people say we can't do something. So I've always actually, you know, had a pretty good response to people who have told me I can't do things. That's definitely what I'm looking forward to doing next year, is proving the people wrong who think this is going to be the norm as opposed to this year being the exception to the rule.

Q. There's been interesting talk about the rapport between the young Americans, lot of friendship, lot of support. Like a lot of friendships, it's easy when things are going well. How do you think the group will interact after this tough run on the clay? Will there be talk of it?
JAMES BLAKE: Well, I guess at least we went through it together; it's not like one guy is doing great and the rest are struggling. We're all struggling right now.
So I think we'll be just fine, especially when we get over to the grass. Mardy and I are going to stay pretty close in Wimbledon. Andy's playing Queen's, I'm playing doubles with him in Queen's. We'll be just fine. Maybe we'll be even closer, now I'm not saying misery loves company, we'll be together when we're miserable until we can get some more wins.

Q. On a more upbeat note, there was a guy who presumably once hung out on the Post Road in Fairfield. He's on the cover of the current issue of a snazzy men's magazine in the US. Could you talk about being the cover boy for GQ? Am I correct?
JAMES BLAKE: Not quite correct, I'm not on the cover. I'm in it.

Q. Okay.
JAMES BLAKE: But I'm not on the cover. I don't know who's on the cover, actually, I haven't seen the magazine. I've just seen the pictures.
But, yeah, it's a little weird. I was a little worried about that, that issue. Most of the things I do, I do it and then forget about it and don't worry about it. This one, the theme was all in white. I don't really wear a whole lot of white in my normal fashion, so I was a little worried I might look out of the ordinary in that one.
But I actually appreciate the way they did it. It was good. There were a couple other guys in the whole piece, so it was well-done. I'm sure I'll get some jokes in the locker room when the guys see it. I'm actually a little upset Mardy went back to the States, now he'll probably see it and get to make fun of me more. I'm hoping the other guys in Europe, will stay over here and won't see it until I get back. I'm sure I'll get made fun of. It comes with the territory.
But it was fun to do. It was a great idea, doing it in a bunch of cities around the world. It was fun.

Q. Don't want to dwell on last night, but I do have one more question. When you were relegated to that outside court, I heard it was basically a TV thing in case Andre had a easy match, they would plug into you. When they saw the match go long, they said, "We'll send them out there." Does that feel like a diss at all? Was it disconcerting?
JAMES BLAKE: No, not at all. In fact, some people who I stay in touch with through e-mail, one of them who takes care of my website actually made a joke about the fact that Andre was playing at the same time as me, so there was about zero chance I was going to be on TV anyway. So I don't see it as a diss at all. He's won this, won eight Grand Slams. I'm not -- I'm definitely not considering myself to be a bigger draw than him. I think that's obvious by the fact that his match was packed on Chatrier and there still wasn't -- I don't even know if it was full at Court 17 for me. I'm definitely still at the point where I feel like I need to earn my way on to center court. Hopefully, I can do that. Next year I think I'll be able to.

Q. What is it about clay that you find particularly difficult? Is it movement? Is it, you know, stroke construction? What has been difficult for you this clay court season?
JAMES BLAKE: It's a little bit of the movements, not being as comfortable for me since I didn't grow up on this. So hard courts, you obviously have great footing, you know you're going to be stable all the time. It can change direction all the time. That makes it easier for me. That's what I'm used to.
To not have the footing and to be able to wrong foot other guys and get wrong footed, the dropshot being so much more effective, it just makes a difference to change the game a little bit. And when you change the game like that, some guys are more comfortable and have the confidence to do those kinds of things and some guys don't.
I didn't feel like I was these last couple weeks. I felt comfortable with that in the past, but for some reason or another, just these last couple weeks, or this week and Rome and Hamburg, I didn't feel that. It's unfortunate, but I feel like it could happen to me a couple weeks in a row on hard courts, too. It happened to me in Memphis, I didn't feel comfortable for some reason. I don't think it has as much to do with the clay as much as just losing some confidence.

Q. It's not just your generation. I mean, the generation has come and gone really, except for Andre, without doing well on clay. Talking since '92, except for Andre, here. Is there like a general American attitude about it that just extends, you know, far before you?
JAMES BLAKE: Well, like I said, we don't grow up on the stuff. Guys, the French, the Spanish, the South Americans play on it from very early on. The guys from California, they don't even know what a clay court looks like. There's very rarely clay courts out in California. That's where a lot of our talent comes from. So you just -- we're just not used to it. When you're so comfortable on it that you've grown up on it, you know how to move, you know how your body is going to react when you slide, you know how a dropshot is going to react on the clay as opposed to hard courts, you can find a way to volley on clay. Volleying on clay is very different because you're never -- you never have the same footing that you have on hard courts. I mean, you could probably ask Tim Henman or Todd Martin more effectively about that. Everything about it is a little bit different.
For us to adjust to that, you know, we're supposedly world-class athletes. Even world-class athletes can't adjust in one day or one week or two weeks to something other guys have been doing for their whole life.
So that makes it difficult. You know, we have a different kind of clay over in America, too. It's a green clay. It's just a little different. For some reason, the red clay courts over there just don't seem the same. We need to come over here to get this experience.

Q. Is there any way to force the issue in terms of clay in California, in the area where there's so much talent? You're a charity guy. Want to contribute...?
JAMES BLAKE: Well, I'd probably first contribute to getting some more clay courts where I grew up, in Connecticut. But, you know, I don't know what's being done with the situation in California. I'm not much of a west coast type of a guy. I don't go out there too much. I heard they're actually starting to build a few, some guys are out there with some clay courts.
Maybe Pete should think about putting a few up. He's a charitable guy and has a little more --

Q. Pete has clay courts at his new teaching academy.
JAMES BLAKE: Really? That's great. I guess it's starting to be addressed. It's good to leave it to Pete to build some clay.