You can ask Vince Spadea anything about his tennis. Ask him about his infamous 21-match losing streak in 2000, which made his name synonymous with futility on the tour. Ask him about hitting bottom as a player shortly thereafter, or the recent resurrection of his career. Just don’t ask Spadea what his rapper name is.

“I don’t want to elaborate on that, because it’s all in the works,” he said with mock seriousness during his post-match press conference Wednesday. “I had a couple of good names. I made some T-shirts, posters. I’m working on an album. But it didn’t fly so well, the name.”

Yet Spadea is not shy about dropping a few rhymes: He surprised the Today Show’s Katie Couric during the Olympics with his tennis-inspired rhymes about teammate Andy Roddick and himself. “I’m Spadea/ I ain’t afraid of ya/ I’ll put a checkmate on ya/ Because I’m the Italian Gladiator.”

“I might have to give him credit for being the best rapper on the tour,” quipped John McEnroe. Spadea concurs: “The work is good.”

More important, his tennis is good. He’s seeded 23rd at the Open, and is playing, by his own estimation, the best tennis of his 11-year career. At 30 years old – the age at which even a rap career begins to look more plausible than gutting it out against kids like the 22-year-old Roddick – Spadea is still adding weapons to his playing repertoire. In fact, he defeated Roddick this March to claim his first career singles title at the Franklin Templeton Classic in Scottsdale, Ariz.

On Wednesday, Spadea served up a career-high 19 aces in his 6-7 (3), 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Luis Horna. Today he’ll meet Jurgen Melzer, whom he crushed in Athens by a score of 6-0, 6-1, “which I haven’t done in a long time,” he said.

For an even longer time, he was the tour’s tough-luck loser, dragging himself off the court after strings of five-set matches, looking mangled win or lose. He rose to a career-high rank of no. 19 in 1999 before injuries, combined with “losing edge, losing confidence,” slowly derailed his career.

The 21-match losing streak ensued, and by the time he snapped out of it by upsetting Greg Rusedski at Wimbledon in 2000, his ranking had plunged to no. 229. He exiled himself to the Challengers circuit – the tour’s equivalent of the minor leagues – for two years while he tried to recommit himself to the game.

“It just kind of unraveled,” he said. “I was just a victim of the harsh realities of the tennis life,” the travel, the pressure, and apathy.

Spadea began to turn it all around while sitting in a cafe in SoHo four days before 9/11, after he had been eliminated in the qualifying rounds of that year’s U.S. Open. (He has also lost in the first or second rounds seven times.) He had reached a emotional nadir.

“I was living the good life, but I really didn’t have anything to say to anybody. I’d already bragged about my years before that. It was time for me to start fresh.”

While sitting at the cafe, people-watching, he says he “panicked.” He started making phone calls in an attempt to find a new tennis team.

One of the strangers who picked up the phone was Pete Fischer, a former mentor of Pete Sampras who began coaching Spadea mainly by phone. With additional help from a sports psychologist and a series of coaches, Spadea began resurrecting his career in 2002 from the “slow death” of floundering in the Challengers. He began winning matches again. He reached the fourth round of Wimbledon this year in straight sets, won the Templeton Classic in Arizona, and qualified for the Olympics, where he lost to eventual gold medalist Nicolas Massu.

Spadea appears primed to make a run at this year’s Open, one of the traditional showcases of his futility. The longer he stays in Flushing, the more of a win-win it is for the fans – it will at least keep him out of the studio.