Black Tennis Pros

March 16, 2009 - James Blake

Hello once again. I hope everyone is doing well. It’s been a very good tournament so far. The crowds have been amazing and the weather has been great.

I managed to get through my first match even though I lost the second set. It was nice and warm during the day, but I played the second match of the evening session and it was a cool night, which made the conditions a little bit slower. I was happy to win and now I can focus on my next match.

When you play on the tour, there are no easy matches, no matter who you play. Sometimes you might see a score of a match that may look like an easy win, but I’ll tell you with the depth in men’s professional tennis these days, there are no easy wins and every match is tough.

In my first blog earlier this week, I mentioned that this tournament will always be special for me because I reached the final here in 2006, but there is something that happened in nearby Rancho Mirage at the beginning of my pro career that was also very special.

It was back in 2000, the year after I turned pro, when I came to the desert to play in a USTA Challenger at the Mission Hills Country Club. The week before, I had lost to Andy (Roddick) in the second round at a Challenger in Burbank, but in Rancho Mirage everything started to click.

I beat Bob Bryan in the first round and I went on to reach the finals, where I beat Cecil Mamiit to win the tournament. It was the second Challenger title of my career. I remember getting the winners’ check for $3,600, but the important thing was the confidence it gave me. It was a really good feeling I had knowing that I could compete on the tour with those guys.

One interesting thing I remember from that tournament was that Bob (Bryan) was debating just concentrating more on doubles. I have to smile knowing I may have had something to do with him and his brother becoming one of the best doubles teams of all-time.

For sports fans, this is an awesome time of the year. Besides all of the tennis going on, there is the upcoming NCAA men’s basketball tournament. I always get together with friends and fill out tournament brackets.

If you didn’t already know, I’m a big North Carolina Tar Heels fan and I’m pretty happy they got the top seed in the South region. I hope they go all the way this year.

Besides following the basketball tournament, I’ll be following major league baseball as soon as the season starts. I’m also a big Mets fan and I hope new relief pitcher Francisco Rodriguez will help the Mets into the playoffs this year.

My coach is telling me it’s time to hit the practice courts, so I’ll say good-bye for now.

All the best.
James

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March 14, 2009 - James Blake

Greetings from Indian Wells everyone.

The good folks at the tournament here have asked me to put together a short blog this week, so I was more than happy to do it.

I love coming to Indian Wells at this time of the year when the weather is nearly perfect for playing tennis. For the most part, I play well here and I have a lot of good memories from the tournament.

In 2006 I had a “dream” tournament when I won five straight matches to get to the finals. It would have been great to win that last match and take the title, but Roger (Federer) was just too tough that day.

I’ve already noticed that this year’s tournament has a little bit of a different feel here because it has a new sponsor, BNP Paribas. I’m familiar with them because they sponsor Davis Cup and they’re a pretty big tennis sponsor in Europe.

The other day I happened to check out the men’s qualifying draw which was played this last Tuesday and Wednesday. I was happy to see guys like Kevin Kim, Robert Kendrick, Todd Widom, Michael Russell and Brendan Evans get to the main draw.

These guys spend a lot of time on the USTA challenger circuit during the year and they work hard, so it’s nice to see them win a couple of matches and get into the main draw of a big tournament like the BNP Paribas Open.

Sometimes as an American tennis player, you hear fans ask, “What’s wrong with American tennis?” If you look at the first round of the main draw, you’ll notice quite a few Americans won first-round matches including Kendrick, Widom and Russell. I was also happy to see Taylor Dent come through with a win. He’s been training hard during his comeback.

When I got here, someone asked me if I had brought my golf clubs with me. I actually didn’t this year, but who knows maybe if I have a chance later, I’ll get out on the greens.

Speaking of golf, I’ll never forget the time a couple of years ago when I went golfing at the Dunes at the La Quinta Resort here with my coach Brian Barker, Mardy Fish and Scott Humphries.

We were on the seventh hole, which is 202-yards and a par three. I used a four iron and I drove the ball, but didn’t see it drop because it rolled behind a little hill. When we got closer to the hole, I didn’t see any balls down there and then I started thinking it might have gone in.

Sure enough, it was a hole-in-one. To tell you the truth, I was excited, but it wasn’t my first one. I actually hit one about four months earlier back home in Florida.

I just found out that I’ll be playing Jarkko Nieminen of Finland in the featured match on Saturday night on Stadium Court. I’ve beaten him in all five of our previous head-to-head matches, but four of the five matches have gone to three sets. He’s a dangerous player and I certainly won’t look past this match.

If you’re at the tournament in Indian Wells, I hope you have a good time at the BNP Paribas Open. There is going to be some great tennis during the two weeks.

Until next time.
James

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As a player, Zina Garrison was known for her speed. She was pigeon-toed, not at all imposing. But when she was on the other side of the net, there seemed to be four Zinas, one for every corner of the court.

In her own way, she was a pioneer among African-American female tennis players, sandwiched between Althea Gibson, whom she befriended in the last years of the legend's life, and the Williams sisters. In fact, she was a bit of a prequel to Venus and Serena Williams, emerging from Houston's inner-city public courts to become a junior national champion who rose to as high as No. 4 in the world.

Unlike the Williamses, Garrison never won a Grand Slam singles title. Yet she won 14 singles and 20 doubles titles, finishing with a solid 587-270 singles record. Her personal highlight reel features a 1989 triumph over Chris Evert in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, a win that sent Evert into retirement. Then there was Garrison's run through Wimbledon the following year. She eliminated French Open champion Monica Seles in the quarters and the world No. 1 Steffi Graf in the semis before losing to friend and mentor Martina Navratilova in the final.

Now comes the flipside – an ugly lawsuit against the USTA alleging racial discrimination in the organization's treatment of Garrison in her five-year tenure as Fed Cup caption.

Captain Garrison was 5-5 in Fed Cup matches and never reached a final. But there were highlights there, too. Just maybe not enough for the USTA, which chose not to bring her back at the end of 2007. They let her coach one more year, giving her a No. 2 "coach," Mary Joe Fernandez, who was also publicly announced as her successor. Last year, in essence, Garrison wasn't even a lame duck. She had no legs.

Race suits are never pretty, even when they are clear, easy and incontrovertible – which this one isn't. Most often they disintegrate into he said/she said affairs, where both sides are ultimately bruised. Or they're settled and only the lawyers win.

This isn't the USTA's only brush with alleged racial discrimination. It is also being sued by former administrator Marvin Dent in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Dent, who is black, alleges he was bypassed for the position of director of tennis at the National Tennis Center in favor of Whitney Kraft, who is white. Dent also alleges a pattern of discrimination at the USTA, which it has denied.

Three years ago, the USTA entered into a consent decree with New York's attorney general that forced it to create an open process for hiring chair umpires. That followed a suit by two black umpires, alleging the USTA allowed racist comments directed toward African-American umpires. The decree lasted two years.

Garrison alleges unequal treatment relative to her counterpart, U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe – specifically unequal pay and unequal resources. She also argues that while she was never given more than one-year deals, Fernandez, with as much coaching experience as me, was signed for three years out of the box – and at a salary higher than Garrison's, the lawsuit alleges.

Garrison claims that the USTA may seek to justify Fernadez's deal by saying she is required to take on additional public duties.

But perhaps more disturbing are the alleged comments attributed to Sara Fornaciari, the Fed Cup chair. If true, they embody the underlying thread of racism that still must be eliminated.

Garrison alleges in the suit that Fornaciari "routinely referred to Garrison as the 'Black Ghost,' to impugn Garrison's reliability."

At a Fed Cup semifinal in Stowe, Vt., in July 2007, Fornaciari allegedly told Garrison after a media interview: "That was the most intelligent media comment I have ever heard you give."

Garrison took it to imply that she was "generally inarticulate and stupid," according to the suit.

In August that same year, Garrison alleges that Fornaciari told her to go to a tent at a USTA sectional event because she might "get a lot of minority business." Garrison says in the suit she was "troubled by the implication that she could network only with other minorities."

Some of the allegations may seem benign, but they tugged at Garrison, who writes that she later called Fornaciari to say she was unhappy with the tone of her comments.

"In response," says the suit, "Fornaciari launched into a vitriolic attack against Garrison and other African-Americans, including the Williams sisters. She told Garrison she was trying to 'help' her, stating, 'Let's face it. You can't talk. Nobody ever knows what you are saying.' "

Garrison challenged the tone of Fornaciari's remarks, but Fornaciari, according to the suit, "became irate and announced in a loud and angry tone, 'I will never speak to another black person again.' "

The USTA would not make Fornaciari available but had a statement:

"The USTA takes all allegations of discrimination seriously and takes pride in its numerous diversity initiatives and achievements," USTA spokesman Chris Widmaier said.

"The USTA elected not to renew Ms. Garrison's Fed Cup captaincy based on her performance, and strongly denies any allegation of discrimination asserted by Ms. Garrison.

"During Ms. Garrison's five-year tenure as captain, the United States Fed Cup team did not advance to the Fed Cup final, its longest drought in the competition's 45-year history."

The suit also alleges that Garrison was also blamed for not being able to regularly recruit the Williams sisters, the two top American players, to play the Fed Cup (more than once, one or both of them would commit to playing, only to be sidelined by injury, which the suit alleges the USTA viewed with suspicion); and that in replacing Garrison the USTA wanted a "public face" and concluded she did not have "the look" it wanted for the team.

Like some other sports, and numerous corporations, the USTA likes to tout its "diversity initiatives," whatever they may be. That's all well and good, but when the words from the men and women charged with leading these initiatives and their enterprises represent the antithesis of what those initiatives aim to achieve, it tells me we still have a very long way to go.

And some places are not getting there fast enough.

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A lot of men and women showed up in Indian Wells, California to play in the BNP Paribas Open. So why is it that their participation isn't the interest around the internet?

The big story is NOT about those who showed up, but about those two African-American women who did not.

Nothing has changed - It's so old!

Did anybody really believe that a rule change would MAKE Venus or Serena Williams return to Indian Wells? If you did, you understand none of which you write.

We'll see them in Miami soon... on with the dudes and dudettes who have been gettin' busy for the past few days!

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Since turning pro within a year of each other nearly a decade ago, Andy Roddick and James Blake have become friends and travel partners, shared Davis Cup duties and carried American hopes on their backs.

But the best male players of the current generation have taken a radically different approach when it comes to the voice in their ears.

Since joining the circuit in 2000, the cannon-serving, forthright Roddick has engaged no less than seven coaches on a part- or full-time basis. Blake, who spent two years at Harvard before jumping to the pros in 1999, has had one.

"I've always said about tennis, it's a very individual sport," 13th-ranked Blake said in a conference call last month. "What works for one will never work for another."

Roddick and Blake will be vying for the BNP Paribas Open title at Indian Wells, Calif., during the next 10 days

"I don't think it was a conscious decision or anything I set out at 18 years old" to have so many different voices over the course of the career, Roddick says. "I don't think it's something that you can generalize."

Roddick began his 2009 campaign with new coach Larry Stefanki, a former pro and veteran coach who has worked with a number of top players. Stefanki replaced Jimmy Connors, who Roddick parted ways with last spring.

Blake is in Indian Wells with Brian Barker, the only coach he has had since age 11.

Blake is much more the exception than the rule. Most players switch coaches throughout their playing days as priorities change and relationships become stale. Compensation, travel and logistics also play a role.

Finding the right mix can be tricky, as Roger Federer learned last week. The Swiss No. 2 could not come to terms with former pro and ESPN commentator Darren Cahill after inviting him for a trial run to his second home in Dubai last week. Cahill, with two young children, didn't want to travel as much as Federer required.

Both Americans say there are pros and cons to their different approaches.

"For me, I would not be nearly as successful with someone that didn't know me as a person, and know my strengths and weaknesses on the court," says Blake, who at 29 has finished in the top 10 two of the last three years.

Roddick joked that mimicking Blake would "require me finding a coach that could put up with me for nine years."

Blake praised Barker for knowing the nuances of his game and for being as much friend as mentor, as when he supported Blake through his comeback in 2004 following a broken neck, the death of his father and a vision-blurring disease.

"I credit him with making me the best player I can possibly be, and absolutely maximizing my potential," says Blake, adding that "we are going to be friends for life, that's not even a question."

"One of the things that makes our bond strong is that there have been so many ups and downs," Barker says.

Former No. 1 Roddick, 26, likes to pick the brain of some of game's best minds, and it has often paid quick dividends.

He rode his early association with Brad Gilbert in 2003 by storming through the summer hardcourt swing and winning the U.S. Open. He has also started strong with Stefanki, reaching the Australian Open semifinals and winning last month's indoor tournament at Memphis.

"There's been a couple of times in my career where it's really jump-started my playing just by having a fresh voice," Roddick says.

The downside is the getting-to-know-you process, along with periods of transition.

"Obviously, continuity is a good thing, and there have certainly been times where I've been without someone or in transition and you're just kind of trying to make due," Roddick said.

With 37 titles and a Davis Cup championship between them, the two Americans must be doing something right, even if they have chosen opposing coaching paths.

"If he had the same coach the whole time he wouldn't be as good as he is, said Blake of Roddick. "If I had changed coaches, the way he has, I wouldn't be as good."

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SINGLES

WTA

Round 1

Angela Haynes, USA defeated Ajla Tomljanovic, CRO
7-5, 6-2

Stephanie Foretz, FRA defeated by Petra Cetkovska, CZE
2-6, 5-7


Round 2

Angela Haynes, USA defeated Ai Sugiyama, JPN
6-4, 7-5


Round 3

Angela Haynes, USA defeated by Flavia Pennetta, ITA
6-4, 4-6, 1-6


ATP

Round 1

Gael Monfils, FRA vs. BYE

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, FRA vs. BYE

James Blake, USA vs. BYE


Round 2

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, FRA defeated Teimuraz Gabashvili, RUS
7-5, 6-3

James Blake, USA defeated Jarkko Neimenen, FIN
6-3, 6-7(6), 6-3

Gael Monfils, FRA defeated by John Isner, USA
7-6(5), 6-1, 6-4


Round 3

James Blake, USA defeated by Fernando Gonzalez, CHI
5-7,-1-6


DOUBLES

WTA

Round 1

Raquel Kops-Jones, USA and Abigail Spears, USA
defeated
Nathalie Dechy, FRA and Mara Santangelo, ITA
6-4, 3-6 [10-5]

Mashona Washington, USA and Bethanie Mattek-Sands, USA
defeated
Sorana Cirstea, ROU and Galina Voskoeva, KAZ
6-2, 6-2


Round 2

Raquel Kops Jones, USA and Abigail Spears, USA
defeated by
Iveta Benesova, CZE and Barbara Zahlavova Strycova
1-6, 5-7

Mashona Washington, USA and Bethanie Mattek-Sands, USA
defeated
Svetlana Kuznetsova, RUS and Amelie Mauresmo, FRA
4-6, 7-5 [10-6]



ATP

Round 1

Jeff Coetzee, RSA and Wesley Moodie, RSA
defeated by
Michael Llodra, FRA and Radek Stepanek, CZE
6-3, 6-3

Gael Monfils, FRA and Mischa Zverev, GER
defeated by
Lukasz Kubot, POL and Oliver Marach, AUT

7-6(2), 6-0

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American Angela Haynes secured her place in the BNP Paribas Open women's main draw, defeating Slovakian Jarmila Groth 6-3, 7-6(2) in the final round of qualification Tuesday at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. The 24-year-old Californian saved all five point break points faced on serve in the second set before going on the close out the match in the tie-break.

Haynes will be playing in the Indian Wells main draw for the fourth time, having received wild card entry in her past three appearances. She reached the second round in 2005 (l. to Sharapova) and ‘08 (l. to Hantuchova).

The French contingent faltered in their qualification bid with Stephanie Foretz (pictured) the only woman from her country to make her way into the main draw. The 104th-ranked Foretz ousted compatriot Camille Pin 1-6, 7-5, 6-4 in two hours and seven minutes, and will be making her fifth appearance in the Indian Wells main draw. Frenchwomen Aravane Rezai, Severine Bremond, Julie Coin and Mathilde Johansson all followed Pin out of the qualification draw.

Source

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SINGLES AND DOUBLES QUALIFYING ROUNDS

WOMEN'S

Round 1

Angela Haynes, USA defeated Olga Savchuk, UKR
6-1, 6-3

Stephanie Foretz, FRA defeated Aiko Nakamura, JPN
6-4, 6-1

Asia Muhammad, USA defeated by Akgul Amanmuradova UZB
6-3, 4-6, 5-7


Final Round

Angela Haynes, USA defeated Jarmila Groth, SVK
6-3, 7-6(2)

Stephanie Foretz, FRA defeated Camille Pin, FRA
1-6, 7-5, 6-4



MEN'S

Round 1

Nicholas Monroe, USA defeated Evgeny Korolev, RUS
7-6(3), 1-6, 6-2

Scoville Jenkins, USA defeated Sam Warburg, USA
6-2, 6-3

Donald Young, USA defeated by Michael Lammer, SUI
6-2, 4-6, 5-7


Final Round

Nicholas Monroe, USA defeated by Rik De Voest, RSA
3-6, 4-6

Scoville Jenkins, USA defeated by Kevin Kim, USA
7-6(4), 2-6, 1-6

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