Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
The buzz theoretically is that the pressure at the Sony Ericsson Open is on Roger Federer, the World No. 1 (hey, isn't there a higher number we can assign this guy?) who suffered an unexpected second-round loss (he had a bye for the first round, no less) to Guillermo Canas at the Pacific Life Open last week.
But the Big Name guy who may be under the most pressure of all is James Blake. Last year, Blake won the big Australian tuneup in Sydney, he reached the round of 32 at the Australian Open, swept his two first-round Davis Cup singles (OK, so it was against puny Romania), won Vegas, battled Federer at Indian Wells in the first Masters Series final of his career, and succumbed to the same Swiss dude in the quarters at Miami.
This year, Blake got off to quick start, defending at Sydney (OK, the field was weak, which helps explain why anything-but-controversial Nikolay Davydenko publicly denounced the event, saying that nobody cared about it), got one round further at the Oz Open, and reached the final at Delray Beach, although he played just one top-50 guy before the final (Yep, No. 50 Florian Mayer) and wound up losing the title match to No. 34, the ever-puzzling former ex-boyfriend of Jennifer Capriati, Xavier Malisse.
I believe you could call it treading water, and there's nothing wrong with it, that is until you stop doggy-paddling and sink like a stone, which is what Blake's done. After Delray, he lost to Tomas Berdych in Davis Cup, won just one match in San Jose (on a indoor surface friendly to his forehand slap shots), failed to get out of the round-robin segment in Vegas (despite Etienne de Villiers' best effort to bump him along) and won just one match at Indian Wells.
The best thing you can say about puppy-loving, bring-this-kid-home-to-meet-the-parents James Blake is that he in effect killed the woeful round-robin experiment (the ATP officially abandoned the complicated and cheater friendly format Wednesday). But that's not exactly what you want for an epitaph, so Blake better get his butt in gear. He ended last year ranked No. 4 in the world, passing his countryman Andy Roddick, who was heading in the other direction, on his way up. Now Blake is No. 8 and Roddick has climbed back up to No. 3. These guys must get tired of waving at each other.
The rap on Blake, whose conduct and persona is impeccable, is that he lacks the heft of a top-5-grade player. His big mission, this year, was to punch through in some big matches at some significant tournaments. He has Florent Serra in the second round at Key Biscayne, but then he gets Marat Safin, seeded 25th, but very dangerous and well-rested. And the winner gets brilliant rising star Novak Djokovic. His mission is mere survival.
Blake needs to find a way to stop the bleeding, and fast.
