India, Jan. 31 -- How do you even top the high that the semi-finals delivered, individually as men and collectively as a spectacle? How does a 38-year-old, still speaking about his match at 3am in Melbourne less than 36 hours before the final, turn up for another battle? How can someone 16 years younger, although after a bruising five-and-a-half hour marathon where he could barely run at times, recover for the last stretch?

"I don't know," said Djokovic. "I cannot make any predictions right now."

"We'll see," said Alcaraz. "Hopefully, it's going to be nothing at all."

At either end of the youngest and oldest extremes, there's history on the line in the Australian Open final on Sunday. But also overlapping questions of recovery, enduran...