them earlier in his career as he was improving his singles game.  In the past six months, Blake's singles ranking has dropped from ten at the end of 2008 to seventeen.  Other players have used doubles success to boost their singles careers.  For example, 2009 French Open Champion, Svetlana Kuznetsova, began her career winning doubles titles with Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Martina Navratilova.  In addition, 2009 French Open semifinalist, Australian Samantha Stosur, has been one of the premier doubles players for several years and has won Grand Slam titles in doubles.  She has talked about how facing pressure situations in the later rounds of Grand Slams on stadium courts helped her during her impressive singles run at the 2009 French Open.  On the men’s side. Roger Federer seemed genuinely thrilled to win the Gold Medal in doubles for Switzerland at the Beijing Olympics after being upset by James Blake in the singles and going without a singles medal as a result.  In a way, Federer seemed to ride that Gold Medal to the 2008 U.S. Open title after having lost his Wimbledon title and Number One ranking to Rafael Nadal earlier in the summer.  Blake, along with Andy Roddick and the Bryan brothers was recently named to the United States Davis Cup team that will face Croatia in the quarterfinals in ten days.  Blake’s selection surprised a few people given his form this year, but James has been an integral part of the U.S. Davis Cup team the past several years.  Perhaps as Blake moves onto his worst surface, clay, for the Davis Cup tie and then on to his favorite surface, hard court, for the U.S. Open Series, his singles play will rebound because of his doubles run at Wimbledon.

Posted by TC at 01:56 PM || Comments (1)