A piece of work of the highest class can be considered a classic. So can a literary production which is sublime. In Cincinnati on Sunday, with the heat surly and sapping, these definitions were met as a Serb and a Spaniard co-authored a work which was bare-knuckle, first-class poetry. Carlos Alcaraz did his composing with a taped finger, Novak Djokovic while out of breath. The former wrote memorable lines, the latter had the last word.

Greatness in sport is born of labour in the heat. A long time ago in 1975, under an aluminium roof in humid Manila, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali pummelled each other for 14 rounds. For all the contempt they had for each other, Frazier, defeated, later said: “Man, I hit him with punches that’d bring down the walls of a city.”