No one able to properly outplay even 35-year-old Djokodal is astonishing indeed. The last time something like that happened was early OE between Laver's Grand Slam and the arrival of Connors and Borg, although that's massively complicated by the mosaic landscape of the tennis tour at the time, with rival circuits separating players for the most part, and even official majors not all being fully competitive. There were effectively six "real slams" in 1970-73 (WB 70-71, USO 70-73; haters of clay, rejoice). Three of them were won by Newcombe, who was probably just about the best player of 1970-73 taken cumulatively overall (something like: Newcombe then Laver then Rosewall, Smith and Nastase then Kodes then Ashe, Okker, Connors etc). He did beat Rosewall on all his winning runs, going 3-1 vs him in slams (lost at 1970 USO, which Rosewall won). Of course, Rosewall was ten years older. Still no comparison to the LulzGen struggling to beat ~10 years older Djokodal once and that at their physical worst, or sometimes not even then, roflmao.
Laver didn't really get beat consistently by anyone until Connors and later Borg (14 and 18 years younger respectively) when he was 35+ himself. He ceded #1 by losing consistency and suffering more off-form losses, in particular failing at the few "real slams". There's a question of when the ceding happened: in 1970, he won 13 recognised events to Rosewall's 6 and Newcombe's 4, finishing as WCT #1 (by some distance) and Grand Prix #4 (in a close race) but somehow failed at both slams losing in 4R (which contributed to him missing the top spot in GP rankings despite winning the most titles), causing quite a few observers to rank either Wimbledon champ Newcombe or USO champ Rosewall, or both, ahead, but it doesn't seem proper to give even the two biggest tournaments such a massive edge that it overshadows everything else given Laver's total superiority otherwise. Slasher the Rankings Master of OER gives Laver continuous #1 until the fall of '71 when he cedes it to Newcombe, who won 6 titles to Laver's 7 (and was 1-3 against him H2H for the season), but one of them was Wimbledon (over Rosewall and Smith, top competition there; Laver went away to Gorman in straights in QF), although Laver won the TCC again.
At any rate, from 1972 on (so aged 33+), Laver mostly confined himself to the WCT circuit and that mostly in the spring half up to the WCT Finals now in May. Finished the 1972 spring circuit as #1, losing the WCT Finals to none other than Rosewall again in a legendary five-setter, so I guess one may say he still wasn't actually toppled H2H until 34. That was the last time; Laver would lose the next editions three to Smith, Ashe/Newcombe, Ashe/Borg - the five-set loss to Borg in 1975 WCT Finals was considered a final passing of the torch moment (Laver was 36 and Borg was 18, huh) - and mostly retire after 1975, playing his last match in '79 aged 40.
Looks like we have Alcaraz to play Connors/Borg to Djokodal's feeble imitation of Laver, considering the age difference (16/17 years younger than Djokovic/Nadal). Only this time we haven't even had Newcombe/Smith/Nastase/Ashe to get some big time wins earlier as well, at most there's mythical peak BO3rev appearing occasionally. Oh well.
