Last night in the third set tiebreak, I was reminded of James Blake’s first big U.S. Open match. It was 2001 and he was playing eventual champion Lleyton Hewitt, but the Louis Armstrong Stadium was his house.

As Blake surged—he won the first and fourth of that five-setter—people packed into chairs and sat in the aisles. Some even found their way onto a balcony overlooking the court and stood, cheering wildly before Blake puked into a bucket and lost the fifth at love.

The second round seemed too early that year, just like a quarterfinal did last night.

The U.S. Open fans have been great to Blake, but not so much the draw. In 2002 he won his first ATP tournament during the summer in Washington and seemed poised to break through, but there again was Hewitt—top seed this time—in the third round. Blake won three games in the fifth set, but still couldn’t muster the upset.

Federer was waiting in the third round in 2003, after Blake found out his father had a deadly form of cancer. He mustered a second-set tiebreak but his heart wasn’t in tennis. In 2004 he mourned his father and battled a virus, missing the tournament.

He was ascendant in 2005. His game was tight and he could play with joy. He even seemed to have packed away some of the frustration that could top his energies in a tough match. But there was no escaping the draw. He lost to Andre Agassi in a fifth-set tiebreak in a breathtaking night match on Ashe.

The Yonkers native has played the kinds of matches that make people want to cheer wildly for him, but he has always come up against the kind of opponent it would take his best game and a stroke of luck to beat.

Where is his Nikolay Davydenko? His Mikhail Youzhny? Opponents he could beat if he could overcome the pressure of trying to reach a semifinal at the U.S. Open. Instead, he gets the high-profile match against the top seed, the legend, the best player the game has ever seen.

You could say he needs to beat these men in order to earn a spot in the last two rounds, and that is true. But he has never caught slack from the fates which conjure the draw here in Queens, where such a feat would be truly appreciated.