zebedee said:
It also rather disingenuous to claim players don't play back-to-back matches during tournaments. It's standard practice in a lot of the ATP tour events and happens too at the US Open where traditionally men's semi-finals were played on Super Saturday, the day before the final. It's almost miraculous how a pro can recover sufficiently in those circumstances when he finishes his semi less than twenty four hours before the championship match.
I agree with your post in general, but in respect of the quoted section, the key point is that a guy in the US Open final only has to recover relative to the person they're playing. (Much that same as if two people are running away from a lion, you only need to out-run the other guy rather than the lion to survive.)
Thus, you can still have a 10% recovery advantage if you've recovered 50% compared to the other guy's 40%. Alternatively, if your still kn*ckered and can run at 8mps instead of your normal 10mps, you'll still do well against someone who's down to 7mps from their usual 10mps.
This accords with intuition and personal experience. You can do a hard effort one day and still do a very decent effort the next day, even though it wouldn't be your best. Obviously, doping would aid recovery, but the point is that it's perfectly possible to perform to a decent level the day after a hard effort without assistance. It's not like doping is required to enable a player to make it out of bed on the day of the final!
I read some analysis once about the relative success rate in the final given the timing of the semi final (ie before or after the ladies' final.) Can't remember the results, unfortunately. There was a theory that the guy from the earliest semi won more often than not due to different recovery periods.