Similarly the cruise essay has a memorable scene where he plays a game of chess against a child. His biographer and close friend, who rarely challenges the DFW mythology directly, specifically calls that one out and explains why he believes it didn't happen and that child didn't exist. Again this isn't embellishing a detail for the sake of a good story, this is much closer to fiction writing, which in contemporary literature is also often closed tied to direct personal experience in this way.
I don't think writing in this way is dishonest, fwiw, or that this indicates anything bad per se. I think characterizing it as journalism, or even nonfictions essays is a mistake though. It's easy to see why it would have been sold that way at the time, but we don't have to stay with that classification now. I don't think it's likely that DFW published anything that could be considered strictly nonfiction. Ambitious as he was, this is almost certainly the reason he never agreed to publish anything in the new yorker which would have been such an obviously ideal publication for his "nonfiction," if it weren't for their sophisticated and ruthless fact checkers.
If you're referring to the 2006 NYT piece on Roger Federer, I think you're not supporting the "quite mundane" characterization
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...
Michael Joyce's highest ranking was 64.
Perhaps you meant "middling professional player"? Because I don't think there's enough money to be made to pay for expenses and support you year-round if you do not crack the top-100.
Yes, Michael Joyce was the 64th best in the world. He’s reached a level of tennis that almost every other player in the world can only dream of. Joyce’s ability to play tennis was rivaled only by a small handful of people in the entire world. And yet… not many will ever hear of Michael Joyce. He won’t be able to earn a sustainable wage playing the game. Ultimately, he might be even worse off than the 64th best player at a local club. So what’s the point? Why does Joyce do it?