The next American idol?

Blake has opportunity to transcend his sport

Name:
James Blake
Born: Dec. 28, 1979 in Yonkers,
Resides:
Tampa, Fla.
Ht: 6-1 Wt: 175
ATP Rank: 37
Plays:
Right-handed.
Fast facts: Turned pro in 1999.
Won two singles titles and five doubles, with career earnings of $2,045,445.



NEW YORK - James Blake listened intently to the news Monday that he had just become the first African-American man since Rodney Harmon in 1982 to make the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, and then confessed, a bit sheepishly, "Really? I didn't know that."

He smiled. Not as broadly as he had after coming from behind to defeat Tommy Robredo. But there was no mistaking the ethnic pride.

Tonight, in a match against his childhood idol, Andre Agassi, Blake can not only become the first black man to reach the Open semis but bring himself very close to transcending tennis and becoming something of an American sports icon as well.

His personality is that scintillating, his history that compelling.

Born in Yonkers, educated for two years at Harvard, a black man succeeding in what has been for too long a white sport in the United States. His chances at becoming a top athlete seemed rather bleak at age 13, when he suffered from severe scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. That illness forced him to wear a brace for 18 hours each day.

The episode was a good warm-up for the travails of 2004, when he cracked a vertebrae in a collision with a net pole, suffered from the virus that damaged his vision for months, and coped with the death of his father. The 2005 season has been better, as he won his first tournament in three years in an Open tuneup in New Haven, Conn.

Andre Agassi seemed to sum up Blake.

"Listen, James is an easy guy to like and he's an easy guy to root for. If he's getting the better of me, if we happen to play, you know I couldn't wish it for a better person."

Just who will own the crowd to night is as compelling a question as how Blake's and Agassi's games match up. On one end will be the 35-year-old Agassi, surely the most popular player in American tennis, one who is chasing a third Open title.

"I think I saw him here back when he had those lime green shirts hanging out of the denim shorts," Blake said. "I think I got a pair of those too, the denim ones. He had the long hair, the earring. People didn't know if his name was Ag-assi or A-ga-ssi. I remember that, being in school and talking about how talented he was."

On the other end tonight will be Blake, who has recovered from injury and tragedy to reach his first Grand Slam quarterfinal. (Coverage of the evening session begins at 7 p.m. on USA)

It was just last spring when Blake lay in a hospital bed with a fractured neck from a freak accident on court. Then later during recovery, he contracted an illness that affected his sight and hearing and temporarily paralyzed part of his face.

It seems like destiny - not that Blake thinks that way, of course.

"I know I'm not in a Hollywood script," he said. "Otherwise I probably would've won a lot more this year. I just think this is all the hard work I've been putting in, all the time I've spent on the court, in the gym."

Agassi holds a 3-1 record over Blake. To this day, Blake counts his sole victory over Agassi, at Washington's Legg Mason Classic in 2002, as the biggest of his career because of the esteem in which he holds his countryman. And nothing that happens tonight will change that, he said.

"I'll still speak admirably of him - before the match, after the match, if someone interviews me during the match I'll probably say nice things about him," Blake said. "He's really a true gentleman. That's something that's impressive when you don't need to do that because you're one of the legends of the sport. You've got everything you can ever dream of, but he still knows how to treat people."

In men's play Tuesday, Roger Federer sneered, tossed his racket in disgust. Horror of horrors, he lost a set.

For most of the U.S. Open, the defending champion and top seed had seemed to sleepwalk through his matches, playing only as well as necessary, waking up and painting lines when pressed. He made up shots as he went along - a sprinkling of aces at various speeds and angles, a backhand pass that got him out of trouble, a volley that came out of nowhere between yawns.

That was enough until he got into a little trouble against Nicolas Kiefer. Suddenly Federer had a reason to elevate his game and stir some emotion. Now he swept in toward the net, pounded winners from the baseline, stopped wasting time and effort.

Under just the hint of pressure, Federer produced his best tennis of the tournament to beat Kiefer, 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-4, and land safely in the quarterfinals. Match point was a masterful final stroke - an inside-out forehand crosscourt that Federer tucked neatly in the corner, far from Kiefer's reach.

After losing the second-set tiebreaker when he netted a backhand half-volley, Federer found himself in difficulty at 3-3 in the third when he faced double break point at 15-40. His answer: a 120 mph service winner to save one break point, a brilliant backhand crosscourt pass to save another. Kiefer made two errors after that and his opportunity was gone.

"That game was huge, absolutely," Federer said. "I was not so happy the way I was playing, especially in the second set. Third was getting better, especially after that pass. I really felt that shift in momentum. I took advantage of that. In the fourth set, I started to feel like I'm really in control again where I didn't feel that way at all before. I had the feeling actually momentum was all on his side."

Federer next plays 11th-seeded David Nalbandian, a 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-4, 6-2 victor over Italian Davide Sanguinetti.

Lleyton Hewitt, the 2001 champion and runner-up to Federer last year, reached the quarters for the sixth straight year with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 win over No. 15 Dominik Hrbaty, who drew more attention for his pink peekaboo shirt than his play.

"It made it a lot easier for me to beat him today," Hewitt said. "I just couldn't lose to a bloke wearing a shirt like that."

Hewitt advanced to play Jarkko Nieminen, who became the first Finn to reach the quarters in a Grand Slam event with a 6-2, 7-6 (6), 6-3 victory over Spain's Fernando Verdasco.

US Open

That's So New York