US Open 2007

It’s been a long and tiring week. US Open fans were staying up late watching their favorite tennis player showing off the spectacular shot-makings. You would see great defensive/offensive games that almost made your heart stop pumping. I was literally hiding behind my pillow watching these kinds of games. Also, you would see lots of players got lost during the game or sometimes got upset when they were making enforced errors.

One match worth mentioning is James Blake’s second-round match against Fabrice Santoro. According to the report, it was a long-awaited accomplishment for this Yonkers player to finally winning a five-set match. Blake mentioned that there used to be a monkey on his back, and now it’s gone because he got rid of the five-setter. Here’s the very good quote from his interview:

“I actually honestly said to myself at the beginning of that fifth set, I'm just not going to lose this match; I'm going to win this,” he later added. “Up until now, the whole five-set jinx, whatever, it had never really entered into my head. When I got in a fifth set, I was just focused on winning and doing what I had to do to get there, but this time I just said to myself, I'm not going let it happen this time.”

Been watching the match almost every night, in my opinion, besides beating your competitor, one-man sport—like golf or tennis—is the game of defeating yourself. No matter how great your competitor is, or how bad your nerve wrecked, all you could do is to staying calm, finding the way to overcome yourself by fighting your ass off. Regardless of the outcome, you already win the match and importantly you should be proud of yourself.