If you hadn’t watched the Davis Cup before this weekend and happened to turn on your television yesterday afternoon, you might have been surprised to find doubles star Bob Bryan playing singles against Russia’s Igor Andreev. If a Bryan brother plays singles in Davis Cup, one of two things has occurred: The “tie,” as Davis Cup battles are called, either has played out perfectly or disastrously. This weekend, for the first time since 1995, all was right for team America, which now has 32 Davis Cup titles to its name.

Andy Roddick, James Blake, and Bob and Mike Bryan overwhelmed Russia this weekend, winning the first three matches of the tie and rendering yesterday’s two singles contests meaningless (Andreev defeated Bob Bryan 6–3, 7–6(4) and James Blake defeated Dmitry Tursunov 1–6, 6–3, 7–5, which made the final score 4–1). An American team hadn’t won a Davis Cup on home soil since 1992 and hadn’t won at all since Pete Sampras almost single-handedly defeated Russia — on clay — in 1995 (he figured in all three victories). We’ve had other fine teams since then, some that underachieved and some that weren’t quite good enough. Never, though, have we fielded a collection of players so dedicated and so accepting of assigned roles.

Those roles — Roddick and Blake handle singles, while Bob and his twin brother, Mike, handle doubles — have made this team both formidable and vulnerable. Most teams don’t select players who strictly play doubles, because doing so would keep a possibly valuable singles player off the team. Patrick McEnroe reluctantly chose the Bryans for the team in late 2003 because he knew that if something went wrong — perhaps an injury to Roddick or Blake, or worse, one of the Bryans — there would be little to fall back on.

The result has been a team with limited versatility (on clay, every match is a struggle) but near invincibility in the right circumstances (hard courts and grass). It’s no small matter to keep a team like this together and healthy, but once that’s done — and McEnroe has done a fine job of it — the right opportunity was bound to present itself. Since the Bryans joined the team, the Americans have lost three Davis Cup ties, two on clay and all by the score of 3–2 (the Bryans lost their only match in the 2005 tie against Croatia, which went on to win the title). This year, as luck would have it, the clay test came early against the Czech Republic, a good team, but not as dangerous as Spain or Russia. The Americans passed and wouldn’t have to see the dirt again, thanks in large part to Sweden’s upset of Argentina, which gave the Americans a far easier path to the final.

The final itself couldn’t have gone better. Marat Safin, Russia’s most talented player, seems to have lost his desire to play tennis and wasn’t fit to play. Nikolay Davydenko, the no. 4 player in the world, played worse and worse this year as he received more and more attention for a gambling investigation centered on one of his matches earlier this summer in Poland. The Russians kept Davydenko on the bench on Friday in favor of the streaky Tursunov. Once Roddick won that match, Blake essentially had the win on his racket because the Bryans were a lock. Before Blake beat Mikhail Youzhny on Friday, he had never won a match that meant anything. That’s over now, and so is America’s 12-year drought, the longest in this country’s Davis Cup history (the 231-pound Davis Cup trophy is 107 years old).

The most interesting thing about this year’s title-winning team is that it won despite largely disappointing seasons by its individual players on the regular tour. Roddick ended the year ranked no. 6 in the world, the same place he finished last year. He didn’t reach a Grand Slam final and blew a two-set lead in the Wimbledon quarterfinals. He won two titles. Blake dropped to no. 13 in the world from no. 4 and won two titles. He still hasn’t gone beyond the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam tournament. The Bryans had a fine year, winning the Australian Open and numerous other titles, but they seemed to tire down the stretch (they lost in the U.S. Open quarterfinals and didn’t travel to the year-end championships in Shanghai so they could rest for the Davis Cup final).

Did concentrating so intently on Davis Cup take away from Roddick and Blake’s singles results? Probably not. But in the future it might, so don’t be surprised if these two don’t play Davis Cup as consistently in coming years (don’t panic, though, as they’ll be together for a little while yet). Roddick has certainly earned the right to move on to other things. He’s only 25 years old and, despite what many believe, is more than capable of winning another major title — especially if someone else takes care of Roger Federer along the way. Somewhere down the line, McEnroe, or whoever eventually takes over the team, will have to groom the next generation (Donald Young and John Isner are the lead candidates), just as McEnroe decided to do when he came along seven years ago after his brother John resigned.

Whatever Roddick and Blake decide to do in coming years, savor this title, because it might be a while before the Americans win another one. Next year, they will likely have to beat France at home and then either Germany or Spain on the road. If they somehow made the final, Argentina, always a contender, would have home advantage. But no matter the place or surface, this American squad has one advantage that no other team in the world can claim: They put Davis Cup first, not second or third or fourth. This event may be a struggling, little-watched team competition in a sport that favors individual achievements, but the Americans treat it like it’s the World Cup. This year, they got what they deserved.

Mr. Perrotta is a senior editor at Tennis magazine. He can be reached at tperrotta@nysun.com.