By the time the thermometer crossed 40oC on Thursday in the Rod Laver Arena, Gael Monfils had been all but brought to his knees. When he bent over, clasping his legs as he gasped for air, his legs shook. He tried to stand, and he stumbled. He tossed the ball to the sky, reached up and attempted to throw his entire body into a full-blooded serve, but only his arm could follow. Monfils’ fight endured as he dug himself into a hold but then he had nothing. Ten games later, his 6-4 3-3 lead had crumbled to 6-4 3-6 1-6. The heat had robbed him in broad daylight.

As always, the second-round match between the Frenchman and Novak Djokovic was billed in all the sensationalist ways that have come to be expected in the narrative machine of tennis: it was a must watch, it was the match of the day. In truth, these big matches between the French and top players rarely deliver on their mythical promises, such are Monfils’ well-established flaws. But their second-round presented a litmus test for two men who arrived in Australia searching for their best selves after months on the sidelines.

Monfils returned from his knee injury layoff and immediately captured his seventh career title in Doha. A match against Djokovic would provide an accurate underlining of his position in the game. Djokovic’s first match back against Donald Young after 6 months revealed that the rest of his game was intact, his desire seemingly refreshed and even though it waned as the match progressed, his new abbreviated and restricted service motion produced similar speeds and the lingering pain seemed to be manageable. A normal match against Monfils would provide further insight into the serve the former number one cannot live without.

This match should have provided answers but packed in a stadium under the oppressive rays of the Australian sun, the game between white lines examined the men for propensity to deal with attrition, not tennis. Even though the Serb had moments where the heat overwhelmed: at 3-3, he lunged to a wide forehand return and dismounted it with a long, lifeless stumble towards the linesmen. At 4-4, he responded by screaming “shut up” towards some noisy fans. But, there was nothing to learn.

Tennis is a peculiar meeting of contradictions. Its current ethos, or at least the one it is projecting the world despite the amalgam of warring governing bodies, is one of change. The scoring is apparently changing, as evidenced by the NextGen ATP finals. The rules are changing, the game is apparently getting faster. But at its core, its traditionalism and, in this instance, its primitive gladiatorial notions of competition remain king. To this sport, near dangerous levels of heat remain simply another interesting variable of competition, never mind the fact that suffocating heat presents as drastic of a change as a match covered by a roof.

Afterwards, Monfils called the temperatures “maybe a little too hot” and he quietly suggested that the players “took a risk” by competing in best of five in such conditions. Djokovic, who has endlessly been in the headlines since the start of the week because of his reported decision to talk to his fellow players about the possibility of forming a union, was much more forceful. He used the opportunity to delicately yet forcefully underline the reasons for his agitation, particularly talking about feeling like a cog in the ATP machine.

“You have to understand what the player goes through,” he said. “When I say you're part of the industry, you're just adding up events there. There is no indication that we're going to have any form of discussion for a shorter season or anything like it.”

“We're just adding events, official events, unofficial events. It feels, from a player's perspective, that you're kind of always in a rush. You're always obliged to play the mandatory events. You obviously have always a big challenge to defend points because it affects everything. You're always constantly, week after week, being part of that dynamic of our sport, which is at times – at times, it seem as bit too much.

Overall, Djokovic finished his 4-6 6-3 6-1 6-4 victory over Gael Monfils with 11 double faults and his average second serve speed fell to a desperate 86mph in the final set as his second serve fell steeply on important points, in particular. But even in the raw stats, it is difficult to separate the anxiety created by the conditions surrounding him from the anxiety caused by his problem. We did, however, learn one thing: this is only the beginning of the new political Novak Djokovic.