Blake Edges Closer to Supplanting Roddick

June 28, 2006 — -- Three years ago, James Blake came to Wimbledon with all but one of the family members who'd made the trip with him the three previous years. The trips were all the more meaningful for the Blake clan because Blake's mother is English and spent her first 16 years in Banbury, 33 miles north of Oxford.

His father stayed home in Fairfield, Conn., that year because he hadn't been feeling well for a couple of months and was scheduled to undergo what he termed a "minor" operation during the fortnight.

After all, Thomas Blake Sr. hadn't been sick a single day in the 30 years Blake's parents had spent together. "I'll be back home before you get back," he told his wife. "It's nothing to worry about."

Blake fell in straight sets in the second round that year to Sargis Sargsian, and his mother immediately flew home to be with her husband, whom she hoped to find recuperating at home after his surgery.

But Betty Blake had a nagging suspicion while in England that her husband had soft-pedaled the seriousness of his medical predicament. Her worst fears were realized when she arrived home in Connecticut to an empty house.

A call to the hospital confirmed the gravity of her husband's condition. It turned out that Blake's father was a very sick man. He succumbed to stomach and esophageal cancer a year later on the morning of the Wimbledon men's semifinals, at age 57.

Three years later, it's a far happier story for James Blake at Wimbledon. He beat Dane Kristian Pless 6-3, 7-5, 5-7, 6-4 Tuesday to advance to the second round, where he'll play unseeded, Wheel of Fortune-friendly ("I'd like a vowel please, Pat") Yeu-Tzuoo Wang of Taiwan.

With world No. 5 Andy Roddick experiencing a drop-off in his results over the past few months and Blake winning titles in Sydney and Las Vegas and posting a respectable third-round result at the French Open, it's possible that No. 8 Blake could leapfrog Roddick in the post-Wimbledon rankings and replace him as the top American.

That's an increasingly likely outcome that leaves the soft-spoken Blake, 26, somewhat humbled.