Mivic
Hall of Fame
We're seriously factoring early round grand slam matches into peak for peak debates now? I remember that match well. Djokovic had a two set lead and was 3-0 up in the third in the match you're referencing. A sharper Djokovic would have closed that one out in an extremely comfortable three sets. Honestly if a guy like Dodig was capable of taking sets off an absolute peak AO Djokovic in 2011 I'm pretty sure someone like a metal hip Murray could have taken advantage of some early round sloppiness to steal a set if he was lucky and we'd all be theorising about the potential issues that a peak Murray would have caused Djokovic in Australia when, having seen that match-up play out in real time, the reality is a lot more straightforward. I really find it absurd that in a sport like tennis, where the margins are so fine and some of the most dominant seasons in the history of the sport have been posted by players who have won less than 55% of total points over the course of a calendar year, and as a result even small mental lapses and moderate displays of complacency can translate into substantial differentials in match outcomes, we're making inferences about the abilities of players based on isolated sets, particularly in the early rounds of major tournaments (where the perceived threat of the opposition is relatively low and sloppiness and complacency are more likely to manifest) at the beginning of the season (keep in mind that Djokovic hadn't played any competitive tennis since the YEC coming into AO12). Arguments like this are why I really struggle to take the hypothetical debates on TTW seriously at all.
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