Blake Suffers Another Major Setback

This year's Australian Open can be added to James Blake's list of Grand Slam disappointments.

The Tampa resident lost 6-4, 6-4, 7-6 (3) Monday to last year's runner-up, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, in the fourth round, continuing the 29-year-old's run of majors without reaching a semifinal.

In 29 Grand Slams, Blake has advanced as far as the quarterfinals just three times - at last year's Australian Open and the U.S. Open in 2005 and 2006.

He's lost in the first round three times, the second round 11 times, the third on seven occasions and the fourth five times.

On the plus side, he has 10 career singles titles at regular ATP events and helped the United States win its 32nd Davis Cup in November 2007.

But he wasn't taking any joy from that Monday night. Usually Blake is talkative, often gregarious, in victory or defeat, always willing to analyze the way a match went, good or bad.

But at his post-match news conference, he appeared close to disconsolate, head down, baseball cap tucked down over his head. He was anything but chatty, sounding like a man that let another chance in a major slip away.

"I didn't take advantage of some of the opportunities I had on some second serves," Blake said. "Didn't feel like I served well. Didn't feel like I returned well. Those are two pretty important parts of the game."

Tsonga didn't give Blake much of a chance to get started, breaking Blake's serve in the first game. It was the same in the second as Tsonga took a 2-0 lead.

Fireworks marking Australia Day in the early stages of the third set put the match on hold for about 10 minutes. It gave Blake a short-lived boost when the American broke Tsonga to take a 4-2 lead.

Blake served for the set at 5-3, but couldn't close it out and Tsonga dominated the subsequent tiebreaker to advance to the quarterfinals against Spain's Fernando Verdasco, who beat fourth-seeded Andy Murray earlier in the day.

Blake refused to blame the fireworks delay.

"No, I've dealt with different things," Blake said. "In any match, there's injury timeouts, things happen in the crowd. Anything could happen. We were prepared for that beforehand. They told us that it was going to happen around that time."