Black Tennis Pros

This is one loss that American James Blake can take with a grain of salt. We literally watched a man without a plan come into the Estoril Open and establish and execute a grand plan.

After his semifinal match was suspended on Saturday because of rain, darkness and who knows what else, Blake came back on Sunday and finished the job, defeating Davydenko 6-7(3), 7-6(2), 6-3.

Not long thereafter Blake had to return to the court to play the final against Spainard Albert Montanes. Montanes saved two match points at 4-5 in the second set and came back to beat 5-7, 7-6(6), 6-0 just over two hours.

Yeah well, he didn't have to play two matches either (sour grapes). Congratulations to Montanes and to Blake. Blake had an absolutely fabulous run and made my tennis for the year thus far.



“Tennis is a game of inches,” said Blake. “If he missed the line by one inch on one of the match points, I would have won. It didn’t and he gained confidence. It happens to every player. Today, it happened to me in the final. With the exception of one bad set I played some high-level tennis all week.

“Of course I’m disappointed in a loss. But I’m going to try and look back in the next couple of days and think about it positively. I came in here with very little confidence on clay, having lost my last two matches. At least now I won my last four matches and put myself in a position to win a clay-court tournament. I couldn’t take advantage of it, but I will go onto next week’s tournament with a lot more confidence and try and duplicate the results.”