It is the hottest debate at the Australian Open: to play or not to play when water bottles are melting, ball boys are fainting and tram lines are buckling.
Hallucinating title pretender Frank Dancevic claims being forced to play in such extreme heat is inhumane.
“And I don’t think it’s fair to anybody when you see players pulling out of matches and passing out,” Dancevic said.
“It’s hazardous to be out there. It’s dangerous.”
Peng Shuai vomited on court, Alize Cornet sobbed and demanded to know “why they didn’t stop matches?” as temperatures soared above 40 degrees for four straight days.
“It was an oven. An oven. It was burning,” the Frenchwoman said.
But championship contender Roger Federer argues “if you can’t deal with it, you throw in the towel”.
“But that’s for me,” Federer said.
“It’s just a mental thing. If you’ve trained hard enough your entire life or the last few weeks and you believe you can do it and come through it, there’s no reason.”
Fellow four-time champion Andre Agassi tweeted: “Heat is not a curve. It is an opportunity to separate yourself.”
And more than a decade after Agassi famously bounded up desert mountains on Christmas Day to earn himself a grand slam edge, it seems the elite are still beating the heat at Melbourne Park.
Tellingly, as the mercury soared, so too did the sport’s Big Four.
Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray all reached the third round without dropping a set.
Was it a coincidence that women’s favourite Serena Williams and two-time defending champion Victoria Azarenka also blasted their way through the brutal first week with a minimum of fuss?
“It felt pretty hot, like you’re dancing in a frying pan or something,” Azarenka said.
“But it’s the same for everybody. You just have to adapt.”
If you’re here to win, former world No.1 Ana Ivanovic agreed that’s all you can do.
“You just have to toughen it out,” Ivanovic said.
“Sometimes it’s hard to catch your breath. You have to find a way to cool yourself and stay hydrated.
“We’ve been playing in this heat for years now – not every year we had this many days in a row – but it’s something you expect to face when you come over here.”
After battling the baking sun and a stubborn opponent for three-and-a-half hours on the hottest day of the week, third seed Maria Sharapova said: “I’m happy. These are the matches that you work for.
“I think you just get numb to (the heat). It just doesn’t faze you any more.”
And nor should it, according to respected sport scientist John Brotherhood, who asserts that the human body has safety mechanisms to protect athletes in extreme heat.
Dr Brotherhood and his PhD student Susan Morante studied the body temperatures and behaviours of tennis players when competing at various environmental temperatures for Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports, a publication by Dr Timothy Noakes, a world leader in exercise physiology.
“What these studies have shown is that when humans are exposed to an increased external heat load, they almost immediately reduce their exercise intensity, just as they do when exposed to a sudden reduction in the oxygen content of the air that they breathe,” Dr Brotherhood said.
“Humans, like insects or other mammals, do not continue to exercise regardless of the outcome; they do not exercise mindlessly until catastrophe develops and they die of heatstroke.”
In other words, Australian Open tennis players, like all human beings, are armed with subconscious defences that will ensure they stop playing before they die, as some people have feared this week.
Tournament referee Wayne McKewen and tournament doctor Tim Wood ultimately have the final say about when play should be suspended at the Open due to extreme heat.
McKewen opted against invoking the extreme heat policy at the Open until just before 2pm on Thursday, three days into Melbourne’s heatwave.
Dr Wood empathises with the players but insists while conditions may be unpleasant, they are not dangerous.
“We can play in these conditions and not be too concerned,” he said.
“The risk to health is relatively low. We have never had anybody die from dehydration on a tennis court.”