It remains not just the largest hole in his resume, but the only one—unless you believe that Roger Federer absolutely, positively must win the ATP 250 in Kuala Lumpur in order to be taken seriously as one of the greatest players ever to swing a racquet.
I refer to the Davis Cup, of course, which Federer and his cohorts remain on track to bag for 2014, barring the kind of disaster that almost befell the Swiss team this past weekend.
It’s interesting, this debate about Federer and the world’s foremost international team competition. His partisans leap to his defense when some suggest that the 17-time Grand Slam singles champion hasn’t shown sufficient commitment to the cause. His apologists point out—and rightly so—that Federer has played a whopping 62 Davis Cup matches in 24 ties over the course of 14 years. That’s just 10 fewer matches than one of the most enthusiastic and reliable of all Davis Cup performers, Lleyton Hewitt.
Of course, Hewitt has been the anchor of two teams that won the competition, which is where Federer’s problem, if that’s the right word, lies. Too many of his matches were pro forma exercises meant to keep the wolves of criticism from his door. Once Federer became a Grand Slam champion, his interest in Davis Cup faded dramatically. It was understandable, but by no means inevitable. Other great champions remained loyal to the competition, come Helfant or high water.
Ironically, Federer’s one-foot-in, one-foot-out attitude toward Davis Cup works against him, because critics might be more inclined to give him a pass had he played much less frequently. At the start of his career, Federer was gung-ho: In the spring of 1999, the 17-year-old rocked the Davis Cup establishment when, playing No. 2 behind Olympic singles gold medalist Marc Rosset, he upset world No. 48 Davide Sanguinetti to help Switzerland make the quarterfinals.