It’s funny because I think 2nd gear Djokovic was actually the missing piece to a lot of his struggles in 2012-14. He didn’t seem to know how to pace himself or when to let the opponent sort of dictate in stretches. Thus you’d end up with a Djokovic just hitting 400 very hard groundstrokes per match and never approaching the net, and by the SFs and Fs it was clear he had already played his best tennis.
USO 12, USO 14, WB 13, FO 14 all spring to mind.
I think to truly trouble today’s Djokovic you have to get him off balance somehow. Either with exceptional returning, serving, power on neutral groundstrokes, or daring and variety. For all the sh*t Musetti got he had a ton of confidence to hit with angles and go for outrageous winners in a varied fashion. That wasn’t just a bad Djokovic in that match. You must disrupt him, that has to be your main goal going into the match, throw him off.
There are just so few players who can do this, and I don’t think Fokina is one of them. They’ll trade some cool rallies but then Djokovic will get into one of AdF’s service games and it’s all she wrote.