All year, Djokovic had pointed himself towards the Olympics. But this was hardly a case of a champion methodically finding his best form. There were early-round losses at Indian Wells and Rome. At Roland Garros, in the wake of playing two straight five-setters, Djokovic suffered a knee injury that required surgery. Remarkably, he was able to compete at Wimbledon, where, as things look now, his run to the finals was in large part a tune-up for the Olympics. Returning to Paris for the Summer Games, Djokovic  benefited from the two-out-of-three set format, and won six matches without dropping a set, including a victory over Rafael Nadal. The gold-medal mission accomplished, Djokovic next played at the US Open, where his title defense ended in the third round.

“It was just really a big struggle mentally for me to play these three matches here, because I wasn’t playing even close to my best,” Djokovic said in New York, after taking a third-round loss to Alexei Popyrin. “So, you know, it’s not good to be in that kind of state where you feel okay physically, and of course you’re motivated because it’s a Grand Slam, but you just are not able to find your game. That’s it.

“The game is falling apart, and I guess you have to accept that tournaments like this happen. Yeah, you could argue that it’s because of the Olympics, but I don’t know. I don’t want to analyze that right now.”