The Road Less Traveled

James Blake ’00 didn’t have a chance to react before it ended.

Down 6-2 in a fifth-set tiebreaker, Blake walked to return the ball as he had thousands of times. Settling into a crouch, Blake stared down his opponent—the 6’10” Ivo Karlovic. Next to the Croat, Blake was a child.

Karlovic tossed the ball, uncoiling his massive frame as he rose to meet the ball eleven feet into the air. Eyes on the ball, Blake split step, ready to move in either direction. He never would.

The ace thundered past Blake at 120 miles an hour. Eyes hidden underneath his black ball cap, Blake lifted a finger to the sky, challenging the call. As he walked to the net, he tapped the line with his racket. The replay confirmed what Blake’s face said: Game over.

A year earlier, it was Blake’s fellow leading American—Andy Roddick—bidding professional tennis farewell. A stone’s throw away in Arthur Ashe, Roddick blinked back tears as he gave his final on-court interview. Blake’s ending had a different feel.

Blake slowly walked to the net, shaking hands with Karlovic and the umpire and packing his bags. His face reflected conflicting emotions—the pain of an end that came too soon and the calm of a man at peace with his journey. Fans rose in applause, whistling and cheering.

One could forgive Blake if he had taken a second to look back. After all, Blake announced himself to the world on the same court that he bid it farewell—Louis Armstrong, the U.S. Open’s second show court. In 2001, a 20-year old Blake, dreadlocks and all, stretched world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt to five sets with the blistering serve and rocket forehand that characterized his biggest wins.

If Louis Armstrong was the sight of Blake’s birth, Arthur Ashe was the sight of his renaissance in 2005. His opponent was French Open champion Rafael Nadal, who had risen to No. 2 in the world on the heels of a 24-match winning streak that included that year’s Canada Masters. By comparison, a year prior, Blake had been lying on a hospital bed with a broken neck, shingles, and his father’s death hanging over him.

No matter. Blake took down the teenage Spaniard in four sets, reaching the quarterfinals. A year later, he reached the same round before falling to Andre Agassi—both results his best ever in a major.

But in 2013, the man who enjoyed the best times of his career on the blue hard courts of Flushing Meadows waved goodbye. He did not look back as he strode off the court—shutting the door on an unusual career in which he took the road less traveled to the top, accomplishing much and leaving with little regret.

THE ROAD FROM HARLEM

There is a sad irony to Blake not ending his career on Arthur Ashe Stadium—the colossal 22,547 seat show court at the U.S. Open. Ashe, who spent a large part of his career training in Harlem, was the first black man to capture the U.S. Open. However, for all the shortsighted comparisons of the two during the latter’s career, Blake had his roots in a different Harlem.

Growing up, Blake was the prodigal son of the Harlem Tennis Center. Blake began coming to the center when he was one year old. In the beginning, he watched his parents play. He was on the court by age four and quickly moved up the junior ranks. By the fourth grade, his family made the move to Fairfield, Conn. to give Blake and his brother Thomas better instruction.

At the nearby Tennis Club of Trumbull, the Blakes bloomed. Harvard coach Dave Fish remembers Blake at 13 being “a little pencil of a kid,” but he quickly developed into one of the top juniors in the nation. In his senior year of high school, Blake made the finals of Kalamazoo, the most prestigious junior tournament in the United States.

“[Tennis] was something our parents were into, so we naturally gravitated towards it,” Thomas said. “He started to get pretty good around fourteen or fifteen…. By the time that he was 18, he was one of the top two players in the country.”

Scholarship offers from the University of North Carolina and the University of Virginia—two of the nation’s premier tennis programs, were on the table. His older brother, who would reach the NCAA Round of 16 later that year, was Fish’s right hand man in pitching Harvard to the younger Blake.

“I [eventually] talked him into it,” Thomas said. “He was thinking about possibly playing for other schools and whether he would be playing as much at Harvard as UNC or UVA. I just gave him my view on what it had been for me there and said I thought he would be able to hack [it].”

In high school, Blake had watched Thomas play at Harvard and had spent time with the team for the last three years. After talking with Fish and his older brother, Blake followed in Thomas’s footsteps, making the jump to Cambridge, and with it, collegiate tennis.

A PART OF A TEAM

Right when Blake got to Harvard, Fish knew that he had a different kind of player on hand.

“Have you ever seen the Batmobile, when [Batman] pushes the button and all of a sudden there is something that nobody expected?” Fish said. “That was James. He had several gears that put him at the head of the pack.... Something would happen, then he would fire out and be a different player. He had more levels to go to than a lot of people do.”

Under Fish’s tutelage, Blake found another gear. The player Fish said had “opened a lot of eyes” before arriving at Cambridge was not physically ready for the ATP Tour as an 18-year old. Collegiate tennis helped him mature mentally and physically in a way he could not as an 18-year-old pro.

“You become a part of a team that is more important than individual success,” Blake said. “Starting as a freshman and paying your dues is a great learning tool. I probably played more matches in a school year than I did in almost any full year on tour. Nothing else builds confidence and makes you feel comfortable on the court like winning.”

While Blake stands now at 6’1”, early on his short stature earned him the nickname “Squirt Gun” from members of the Harvard tennis team.

“He used to come to [Harvard] matches when he was in high school,” said Kunj Majmudar ’99, Blake’s doubles partner at Harvard. “My early memories of him were when he was a little kid, and he wasn’t that big.”

Playing Ivy League tennis allowed Blake’s body to develop physically. As he put on muscle, his forehand—which was clocked at 125 miles per hour in 2011—became a Tour-level weapon and the center of his game. The relatively relaxed environment of Cambridge allowed the 18-year old to refine his technique and find an identity in his game.

“I don’t know that his body would have held up if he had gone right back on tour like a lot of the other guys that went out of high school,” Thomas said. “It was a good intermediate step where the competition was better than the juniors but not as good as on Tour. It let him get stronger without being under a ton of pressure and not having to battle for a living.”

Blake’s route was unusual, but certainly not unique. Many of tennis’ big hitters, including top-20 players Kevin Anderson and John Isner, were All-American college players first and pros second. Isner, who trained with Blake in Tampa, Fl., said the pressure of collegiate tennis prepared him well for the Tour.

“You’re not playing for yourself—you’re playing for your teammates and you’re playing for your school,” Isner said. “Playing in a very big, very heated college tennis match is about as pressure-packed a situation as you can get.... I’ve been more nervous playing college tennis than I ever have been actually playing in the pros.”

Blake’s juniors experience may have prepared him somewhat for the level of competition, but not for the team atmosphere of college tennis.

“It’s an individual sport, so we don’t have that many opportunities to feel like part of a team,” Blake said. “But when we do, they are usually memorable. The screaming of ‘Go Crimson’ after every big point and the support was so much fun during dual matches.”

A change in the format did not affect Blake’s excellence on the court. When he began competing as a freshman, “Squirt Gun” quickly became more deserving of his older brother’s nickname—“Tommy Gun.” The freshman blew past all expectations, teaming up with Majmudar and upsetting the top-seeded doubles team in just the duo’s fourth match together en route to the NCAA quarterfinals.

Blake’s meteoric rise continued in his sophomore year, when he became the first Ivy League player ever to win both the singles and doubles tournament at the ITA All-American tournament, a collegiate Grand Slam event.

“He was improving so fast that agents were calling me all the time to see if they could get an in with him,” Fish said.

Over winter break, Blake won a low-level professional tournament. The sophomore, who said the win “made me realize that I had a chance to play on that level,” had a decision to make. He had always planned to finish college, but collegiate tennis no longer offered a high enough level of competition.

“As the best guy in college, when you have outpaced your opponents in college, you can talk about it a bit more,” Fish said. “He needed more challenge at that point and the college game wasn’t giving it to him.”

Blake delayed the decision until the end of the year. In the NCAA tournament, he battled to the singles title before falling to the second-seeded player, University of Florida’s Jeff Morrison. That summer, he was chosen as a practice partner for the U.S. Davis Cup team. After discussing it through with Fish, Blake turned pro.

“I think it began to be clear that if he was going to be offered so much money that he could pay for school many times over and have a safety net to go out on the Tour for a couple years without risking everything, then he should go for it,” Fish said. “If I am telling him to stay in college so that we can win a lot more matches, that’s a lot like trying to staple a leaf back onto a tree.”

LIFE ON THE TOUR

Blake joined his brother in the pro ranks in the summer of 1999, teaming with Thomas in doubles at the U.S. Open. No longer playing for a team, the 19-year-old James found the atmosphere of the Tour a world apart from Harvard tennis.

“It is an extremely selfish endeavor on tour,” Blake said. “We are playing for ranking points and money out there, but at college, we wore our team colors with pride and played for that. But the intensity level does jump up quite a bit when guys are playing for their livelihood.”

Blake spent the majority of his first two years on tour on the Challenger circuit, slowly moving up the ATP ranks. In 2001, he joined the U.S. Davis Cup team. By the end of that year, he broke into the top 75. By mid-2003, Blake had risen as high as No. 22 in the world, won his first career ATP title, and reached the third round of the U.S. Open.

Then, disaster struck. In 2004, when it rained for Blake, it poured. In May, Blake slipped on a line at the Italian Open, breaking his neck. Two months later, his father, who had been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, passed away. In the midst of this, Blake developed shingles.

By April 2005, his ranking had dropped all the way to No. 210. He returned to the Challenger circuit, playing for four—not six—figure paychecks. Driven by his hardships, Blake began regaining some of his success—and more.

“His life became much more real,” Fish said. “It focused his energies in a way nothing ever had before. Things had come very easily before, and he thought that his was a chance he would never get again.”

A revitalized Blake, as always, found success at home. He made back-to-back U.S. Open quarterfinals in 2005 and 2006, rising to No. 4 in the world by the end of 2006. The former Davis Cup hitting partner was the world’s top-ranked American, a skeletal frame belying his power game.

“When he was on, when he was hot and in the zone, he could absolutely beat anybody in the world,” Isner said. “He just crushed the ball and it would somehow find the court. For being not such a big guy, he could hit the crap out of the ball.”

Blake’s signature shot was his screaming forehand, but he quickly earned praise for other parts of his game. The 25-year-old quickly developed a reputation as one of the best returners in tennis.

“If his opponent hit a very big serve to his forehand, or his opponent hit a big forehand to his, he used pace,” Isner said. “He could return a serve harder than his opponent hit the actual serve.”

On the Tour, Blake found joy once again in its only team competition—the Davis Cup. In 2007, the team of Blake, Roddick, and the Bryan brothers defeated Russia to win the title for the first time since 1995.

“[That was] the most special moment of my career,” Blake said. “We had so many great and tough times together. To finally win it and have all of us contribute was an amazing feeling. We have so few opportunities to play as a team and that one was the pinnacle for us.”

Competing for the United States brought out some of Blake’s best tennis. At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Blake upset top-seeded Roger Federer in straight sets to reach the medal rounds. But Blake failed to reach the podium, losing to the Fernando Gonzalez in the semifinals and to Novak Djokovic in the bronze medal match.

“Playing for your country is different because you feel such a sense of pride and duty,” Blake said. “[You are] so proud to wear USA on your chest, but also aware of all the great players that have worn it before and what they accomplished.”

THE END

After success in 2008, age and injuries began taking their toll on Blake’s body, and the American would never crack the top 10 following the 2009 Australian Open. At a time when the average top 10 player was less than 24 years old, the 29-year old’s body left him on the outside looking in.

As his body wore down, Blake began to consider ending his career.

“I knew my body couldn’t handle the type of training I used to be capable of,” Blake said. “So that would reflect in my results being less than what I thought I could do. When that became apparent to me and that I couldn’t improve the way I used to, I thought it was time to stop.”

Entering the 2013 U.S. Open, the 33-year old had struggled to find his previous form. He had failed to qualify for the Australian Open and had won only one major singles match all year.

Before the tournament started, Blake made clear it would be his last. His brother cited the relentless grind of the Tour—unlike other sports, tennis has no offseason—as the main factor pushing him to consider retirement.

“It isn’t like other professional sports in that you are playing 11 months out of the year, and that month off, you have your charity events and are still traveling,” Thomas said. “He had been doing that for 15 years, and you get worn out. At that level, if you cannot give it your all then the guys at that level are just too good, regardless of how you are hitting the ball.”

Blake bypassed qualifying rounds into the U.S. Open after being given a wild card by the tournament, and was slotted to play Karlovic for his first-round match.

The end was short—after falling to Karlovic, Blake waved at the fans in Armstrong Stadium, the final time he would do so as a singles player. Blake said that after he walked off the court, he was honored by the amount of support he received.

“People I hadn’t heard from in years were texting or e-mailing to congratulate me and wish me luck in retirement,” Blake said. “Juan Martin del Potro, Andy Murray, and Alex Bogomolov [greeted me] after my last match in the locker room. They waited around to wish me well, and that was such a classy move by them and I will not forget it.”

Reflecting back, Blake acknowledged that he would never experience anything quite like the Tour again.

“I will miss the competition and the friendships the most about the tour,” Blake said. “I realize I won’t ever feel that same pressure of a fifth-set tiebreaker or anything like that after my career, and I loved those moments. The friendships I made were special to me and I will remain close with many of the guys on tour, but not seeing them in the locker rooms every week will be different.”

That loss was one felt not just by Blake, but by friends and fellow players on the Tour, some of whom Blake played with for years. Support poured in over the days following his announcement, both directly to him and over social media.

“It’s going to be a little bit of an adjustment for me, and for everybody, really, to not see him around in the locker room anymore,” Isner said. “[His retirement] was pretty tough for me to swallow, and a lot of other guys are good friends with him. But I think he went out his way—he had an incredible career given all the setbacks and everything he had to overcome. He had an incredible career, I think a career that he never could have imagined having.”

Blake’s setbacks might have broken a lesser player. No one would have faulted him for quitting in 2005. But he kept going, reaching the pinnacle of his career the next year with encouragement from his friends and coaches.

“Part of his success is that he puts in a lot of hard work and a lot of time,” Majmudar said. “But I think also a big part of his success is how he handled success and stayed grounded.... While you can’t necessarily quantify that, that was a definitely a large part of his success, especially when he went through difficult times.”

It is easy to see Blake’s career as that of an overachiever. The “pencil of a kid” played twentieth-century power tennis in a different era; when injuries sapped his strokes of their power, he won on guts and experience. In his 15 years after leaving the safe confines of the Murr Center, Blake battled back from adversity on and off the court. Even his trademark doggedness occasionally did him in—his 2004 neck injury came from an inadvertent dive into the net post, trying to recover a drop shot.

Yet, the title of overachiever demeans and trivializes Blake’s success. Harvard’s most famous tennis player had wins on the biggest of stages—from the junior courts in Kalamazoo to the fortress of Arthur Ashe—and the talent to match it. In the end, perhaps it would be more accurate to term Blake an achiever. Looking back, his brother said that Blake can rest satisfied on a career that had a little bit of everything.

“He always says and our coach always stressed that when you retire you want to look back and feel like you gave it your all,” Thomas said. “And I think he can look back and say he did that.”

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @CrimsonDPFreed.

—Staff writer Samantha Lin can be reached at samantha.lin@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @LinSamnity.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: Jan. 7, 2014

An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the tennis facility where the Blake brothers “bloomed” as young players. In fact, it was the Tennis Club of Trumbull not the Trumbull Tennis Center.