Operation Doubles Tennis: Player Profile: James Blake

James Blake is fast becoming my favorite player on the Pro Tour, so it is a pleasure to do a profile on him.

What I find most interesting about him is that he never intended to become a pro tennis player.

He’s 27 years old, born December 28, 1979 -- in Yonkers, New York (but we won’t hold that against him ;-)

He grew up in Connecticut. Though he began playing tennis at the age of five, his future in the game didn’t seem auspicious. He wasn’t the product of a tennis academy, though he did take lessons and took part in the Harlem Tennis Project every Sunday.

It’s hard to believe that the man we see now could have ever been a terror, but he admits it: "I was, so when I was on the tennis court, you could really see it. Throwing rackets, whining, temper tantrums." He adds, laughing, that he had a "not-so-great example" in John McEnroe to look up to and use as an excuse.

We saw Andre Agassi mature, but James Blake did it at a much younger age. In an interview with 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace in 2005, Blake said that when he was 17, his mother asked him what the second of two trophies he received was for and thought he was kidding when he told her it was for sportsmanship.

What happened to create this change in him with such blinding speed that even his mother was surprised?

My guess is that adversity combated built strong character in him. What do I mean by that?

Well, if character were a thing you could see, a weak character would be a fuzzy, metamorphic, vague, and artistically impressionistic one that you can barely make out any outlines of shape in. Like a puffy, swirly, shape-shifting cloud.

Strong character is like a diamond and is made the way a diamond is made – by withstanding crushing adversity. A strong character is one with bold, smooth outlines of a definite shape. You can see that person’s character emerge in everything they say and do. It has integrity. It isn’t what just anyone would say or do. It’s from the soul.

People with strong character have a distinct, strong personality. They don’t need to express it at maximum volume to feel noticed. They don’t need to play stupid mind games to prop up their egos.

I give you, James Blake.

As a teenager, he suffered his first great adversity from severe scoliosis. He had to wear a body brace 18 hours a day for 5 years. Like a normal kid, he played for his high school team. During his junior year, his height spurted 9 inches. His game did too. During his last two years of high school he didn’t lose a match for his team.

Then he went to Harvard, where he surprisingly became the No. 1 18-and-under and No. 1 collegiate player in the country. That attracted the attention of professional people managers, whose appearance on the scene suddenly made the prospect of a pro tennis career enter James’ head.

In 1999, during his sophomore year, he left Harvard to turn pro.

That amazes me. How many thousands of kids dream of becoming professional tennis players and work hard to make that dream come true? But get nowhere?

Yet every once in a while, someone like this comes along. Someone who wasn’t even thinking of a tennis career. Out of nowhere he or she comes and starts winning. Suddenly, they’re a professional tennis player.

I saw this happen one other time too. Tom Gullickson and his late twin brother Tim were from my area. They were average kids who played on their small Wisconsin high school tennis team. Nobody saw anything special in them.

The next thing you knew, they were winning serious professional doubles matches together and had become the darlings of TV because they were good-looking, right-and-left-handed twins from a mythical place in America where there is nothing worth noting = Flyover Land, specifically, the boondocks of cheeseheadland on the Mississippi River.

The next thing you know, their life plans had changed and they were on tour doing well in singles too. The people in their hometown were stunned.

Obviously, the confidence instilled by fortunate wins at key moments has something to do with this phenomenon. Suddenly these guys find themselves out-hitting the big guys and that’s a stunning revelation.

One that gives them an idea: I could play pro tennis!

There are thousands of players with the technique (if only they all knew it), but only dozens of them gain the confidence and then apply the focus and willpower to reach the top of the game.

In fact, a British player (whose name, unfortunately, I don’t recall) recently said that her time at Nick Bollettieri’s Academy was a great advantage her that most other British players don’t have. Why? Mainly because at the Academy she met and played people with awe-inspiring world ranking numbers.

But they inspire no awe in her, because she knows them in the flesh, and they are just people to her. Hitting the ball back to them is no big deal for her. She is confident that she can do that, because she has done it many times. In fact, she wins rallies and points from them all the time. And games. And if you can win points and games, you can win matches.

After that, it’s mainly a matter of getting used to the more pressing and faster ball play at the pro level.

That’s where James Blake found himself in 1999 – realizing that he could play pro tennis.

Bruce Schoenfeld of the Washington Post writes in a review of Blake's book

Before long, he was tucked into the same cocoon as the tennis lifers, partying with Giorgio Armani, meeting the pope, accepting as his due the perks of his profession. "Life out on the tour," he admits early in Breaking Back, his chronicle of a 2004 season filled with distress, injury, illness and - ultimately - insight, "is often one long dream." Four years into his professional career, he'd won only a single ATP Tour event. He routinely stayed up all night after each loss, distracting himself with hours of video poker. Yet as he shamefully realized, as of December 2003, his biggest decision was whether to shave off the dreadlocks that had become his signature look and risk losing endorsement dollars in the process.