Two thirtysomething players make life difficult for James Blake.<\/b><\/p>\n
When I do my fantasy team picks<\/a> each week, I don\u2019t pick every match in every draw because it takes too long and sometimes I miss something big. Here\u2019s one I missed: Vince Spadea<\/b> had a 6-1 record over James Blake<\/b> before their match today here in Los Angeles at the Countrywide Classic.<\/p>\n Blake hasn\u2019t beaten Spadea since they met in Vienna in 2002. Spadea has been around for a while, he celebrated his 33rd birthday this week. I didn\u2019t watch those Spadea-Blake matches but after watching Blake play Paul Goldstein<\/b> last night, I can guess how Spadea won all those matches.<\/p>\n Goldstein is 30-years-old himself and had beaten Blake in their only previous meeting. He must have been exhausted because his wife Abbie gave birth to their first child just five weeks ago. It showed in the first set. Blake won it 6-0 by smashing each of Goldstein\u2019s second serves down his throat and blasting forehands. In the second set, though, Goldstein eased into his specialty \u2013 he calls it \u201cbeing the wall\u201d and it includes literally throwing himself at a ball if necessary \u2013 and it frustrated Blake.<\/p>\n Blake was still firing away but now he was missing. Players like Goldstein and Spadea are grinders. They keep the ball in play and since they don\u2019t go for tons of winners, you don\u2019t get many angles to work with. Blake is the opposite. In an ESPN interview with Patrick McEnroe<\/b> and Cliff Drysdale<\/b>, he said that the only way he he\u2019ll get deep into a slam is by playing high risk tennis. He\u2019s going for winners no matter what.<\/p>\n Goldstein won the second set easily and actually got a match point at 5-5 in the third set. Blake fought it off and broke Goldstein in the next game then served out the set with three aces to win the match, 6-0, 1-6, 7-5. Spadea went down in straight sets today but it wasn\u2019t easy, the difference was only one break as Blake won, 7-6(2), 6-4, and moved onto the semifinals.<\/p>\n After the match with Spadea, I reminded Blake about his high risk comment and I asked him what happens when he gets into a match in a slam and he can\u2019t keep his high risk shots in the court. What does he do then?<\/p>\n His first plan is just what we saw against Goldstein and Spadea, keep firing away:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I go directly to plan B. I think I keep going after my shots\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n There is a plan B though:<\/p>\n \u2026there\u2019s also other ways of just trying to figure out what can make the other person ineffective. If it\u2019s chipping a lot of balls and they don\u2019t like moving in, something like that.<\/i><\/p>\n I have seen Blake try to get to the net when he\u2019s behind but I\u2019ve seldom seen him chipping very much. If you\u2019ve seen it, leave a comment. Maybe that\u2019s one of the reasons he gets discouraged at times, if he can\u2019t overpower his opponent, he\u2019s not as confident with his other options.<\/p>\n Pam Shriver<\/b> was sitting in the stands and she interviewed Blake\u2019s temporary coach \u2013 his regular coach Brian Barker<\/b> is taking the week off. She asked him if Blake\u2019s camp talks about the mental game and he said they don\u2019t talk about it much. That\u2019s rather hard to believe.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to know what Blake\u2019s coach says to him when he plays a match like his loss to Max Mirnyi<\/b> last year at Wimbledon. Blake went up two sets to one then lost the last two sets, 1-6, 0-6. I\u2019ll ask him tomorrow after his match.<\/p>\n Check out our new myspace page<\/a> and add us to your friends network!<\/p>\n Read other articles about Los Angeles: Two thirtysomething players make life difficult for James Blake. When I do my fantasy team picks each week, I don\u2019t pick every match in every draw because it takes too long and sometimes I miss something big. Here\u2019s one I missed: Vince Spadea had a 6-1 record over James Blake before their match today here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atp-players","category-atp-tournaments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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