Breaking Back by James Blake

This is a refreshing and inspirational story, one that leaves your mouth open as you witness and experience the challenges that Blake went through, as well as leave you with a smile and a pump of the fist as he slowly and steadily built himself back up. Most people would not overcome such devastating life experiences in such quick succession, at least not as well as he did. But this was what Blake did when, after he broke his neck, lost his father to cancer and came down with zoster, he was able to climb back in the rankings and do better than he had ever done before, winning two titles (he had only won one previous tournament in his career) and getting to the quarterfinals of the US Open, catapulting himself to a ranking of 23 from a low of 210 in 2005, then to 4th by the end of 2006 (with an additional 5 tournaments).

This is an up front and honest account of Blake's personal life, bringing the reader into a world that is hard to understand. We get to see some of the inner workings of the tour, as well as some of what tennis pros go through in their day to day life, but not too much.

This is, of course, not meant to be a day to day memoir of his experiences on the tennis court. Some may pick this up thinking they will get to read about tennis a lot more than is present, but this was never Blake's intention. After all, the subtitle of his book is "How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life". So instead of a book crammed full with tennis thoughts on matches and other players, we get to witness through Blake's words what he went through, starting with where he came from and going through where he eventually got to at the end of 2006. It is clear that it was his father who played such a huge role in his life and this biography is an homage to him. Additionally, Blake reiterates how much of an impact his coach had on him through his philosophic style of coaching.

I think this is definitely the way to go, besides not straying from what he intended to write upon, and has helped paint a picture of himself that is sure to gain him many fans and inspire many more. His writing is easy and enjoyable and flows from beginning to end. I've always been a fan of Blake, even before I knew what had happened to him in 2004, and after reading Breaking Back I am an even bigger fan. I definitely recommend this book to any interested.

4 stars.