Blake Blinks

I hustled over to catch the fifth set of Monsieur Monfils and James Blake, on the infamous Bullring, Court No. 1. It’s one of my favorite courts – anywhere in the world. Whoops. Sorry, I blanked out for a moment, plumb forgot that I’m a uncouth, uneducated, monolingual xenophobe!

Anyway, the press section at No. 1 is especially cozy; it’s at the southwest corner, courtside. Unfortunately, Monsieur Monfils is a big star here, so I couldn’t get into the limited seating area. Sometimes, the usher lets you slip in and sit on the steps (even if you don't slip him a Euro or two - what do you think this is, York?) but the guy today was an officious ass.

I snuck around into the photo pit, immediately under the wall at the south baseline. There, you’re just a few feet from the baseline, your eyes at the same level as the players’ feet, and you watch (and the photogs shoot) through discreet, rectangular cutouts. It’s a pretty unique vantage point. I was struck by the comparative weight of Monfils’ ball and the comparative nimbleness of Blake.

At 4-3 in the second set, Blake had an opening at 15-30, but nothing much came of it. He was at the south end of the court, and as he lost the game and turned to walk back to serve, the look on his face spoke volumes. He was more than worried; he looked uncertain, borderline grim.

I had an immediate, overpowering gut feeling that he was I deep trouble. It only increased a point or two later, when he contemplated the two balls in his hand, choosing which one to serve, looking for all the world like Hamlet contemplating the optic yellow skull of Yoric.

This guy is toast, I thought.

And so it went.

We’ve gone on this subject quite a bit at TW: at what point does tennis cease to be about forehands and backhands or, if you prefer, X’s and O’s? I still feel that as important as solid fundamentals, stroke production and talent are, matches, especially big matches, are only about those things at the best of times – when both players are blue-chip competitors are firing on all cylinders, relatively free of mental torments. Look under SA for Sampras vs. Agassi.

If you watched carefully, or even casually, perhaps you noticed the Monfils was more fired up; he was and more willing and eager to seize the prize. So, all other things considered, this match was three things that don’t usually go hand-in-hand: it was an excellent, entertaining battle (at least until Blake bailed at the very end) and it was both a breakthrough performance for Monfils as well as a bad loss for Blake.

I know that my Manichean view of the game is problematic and imbalanced. There's an awful lot more grist for the conversational mill when you’re talking backhand grips, second-serve percentages, and whether to hit your approach to The Mighty Fed’s forehand or backhand. There’s not a whole heck of a lot to say about players winning or losing because their confidence or will failed at a critical point.

It's almost pure, unadulterated speculation. How do we know with any certitude what was happening inside Blake's head, and how it affected his play? And if Blake happens to beat Monfils, nobody’s going to say, “I can’t believe he still won after that face he made!”

Another problem with the Psych 101 approach is that it's close to a can't lose situation for a pundit. Kind of like picking a huge underdog to win a match. If you pick, say, Eva Majoli to beat Martina Hingis in the French Open final and she wins, you're a genius. But who's going to remember you as the idiot who predicted the upset of the favorite wins?

But none of that means that the Psych 101 approach isn't valid, or accurate.

So you’ll just have to take my word (or not) for it: Blake's fate was writ large on his face, in a way that should never happen to a top player. His own post-match explanation of what went wrong was intriguing, in an elliptical kind of way. Somebody suggested that it seemed at the start of the fifth that Blake was about to take control and conclusively finish the match. His answer:

I felt like he was a little more worn down than I was, but I just, like I said, I missed a few that I shouldn’t have. He managed to keep steady.

Missed a few I shouldn’t have. . .

If my theory is correct, Blake missed a few because he was pressing – feeling he needed to more than he actually did. Which ultimately led to another question: Why did he come in so much at the end of the match, instead of making the youngster take the initiative to win the points, or at least allow him to get nervous or impatient.

Again, Blake said something interesting:

I mean, my goal going in today, it was to finish a lot more points at the net because that was effective towards the end yesterday (the match was suspended by darkness after two sets). Felt like it was going to be effective. I think I actually did it too much right at the end of the match. I was rushing a bit, maybe just thinking that he would kind of nervous in that situation, and he wouldn’t – he would kind of push those.

I was rushing a bit. . .

Hmmm. . .

Blake is now 0-8 in five-set matches; perhaps he needs to think a little about pacing himself, and finding ways to elevate or at least maintain his game at crunch time. All these elements surely are interrelated, and they add up to a portrait that has to be considered unfinished. Blake had a great opportunity at this tournament, and on balance he made great strides as a clay court player.

By the same token, the fault lines exposed by Monfils (not the worst-case scenario in third-round opponents, all things considered) suggested that Blake just isn’t ready to penetrate deeply into a major played on a challenging surface on foreign soil.

Bottom line: Blake blinked.