Who has looked the best after a lackluster two days at the ATP Finals?

The ATP’s and WTA’s season-ending championships are set up the same way: The Top 8 players square off in two round-robin groups, and at the end of the week four of them advance to the semifinals. Only one match is played at a time, and each is meant to be a showcase for the best the tours have to offer. In 2016, the two events have had something else in common: Their biggest draws—Serena Williams on the women’s side, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on the men’s—were MIA.

But that’s where the similarities have ended in recent years. While the WTA Finals, first in Istanbul and now in Singapore, have tended to inspire memorable matches and performances, the ATP’s World Tour Finals in London have brought out the mediocre. The 2014 edition of the event was legendarily lackluster: Only one match in each of the round-robin groups went to a deciding set, and the tournament, and thus the ATP season, ended with a withdrawal by Federer in the final. Things were marginally better in 2015, though straight-setters were the rule again.

So far in 2016, that tepid trend has continued. After two days, all eight men have played, four matches have been completed, and the results have been almost uniformly forgettable. Marin Cilic, Gael Monfils, and Stan Wawrinka were off their games and off the court quickly. Dominic Thiem started well against Novak Djokovic but faded almost as fast. And while Andy Murray and Djokovic won comfortably in the end, each struggled to find his form.

What ails the WTF? A few thoughts:

—The end of an 11-month season seems to left the men less fired up than burned out. Monfils, Raonic, and Wawrinka have been struggling with injuries, Thiem has played 27 events this year and hasn’t had a good fall, and Djokovic has sounded eager to get the off-season started.

—The round-robin format, which allows players to lose a match, or even two, and still qualify for the semifinals, may make them less desperate to mount a comeback when they fall behind.

—This year the hard-court surface at the O2 Arena is a little quicker than it has traditionally been. Some players, including Murray, believed that might lead to more entertaining matches. It hasn’t proven to be true so far, but the week is still young.

—The absence of Federer and Nadal has lowered the buzz in the arena considerably.

So who, if anyone, does a subpar level of play favor in London?

Kei Nishikori may have been the sharpest player from start to finish so far. Granted, his opponent, Wawrinka, was a step or three slow at the start, and wasn’t much better at the end. But Nishikori, whose attack-first game may benefit the most from the faster surface, returned with depth and controlled the rallies from there. He was as energized as Wawrinka was sluggish. And now that he has a win over Stan, Kei has the inside track to the No. 2 spot in his group.

Still, while Djokovic and Murray were hardly at their best in their opening matches, they had one thing going for them that might be crucial during a week like this: Both men have the types of games that allow them to survive and advance without playing especially well. I don’t mean that in the common, clichéd sense that “champions find a way to win.” Instead, what struck me while watching the world’s No. 1 and 2 on Sunday and Monday is how much more margin they have in their games, how much safer they can play it and still win rallies, how little they have to rely on hitting risky, brilliant shotmaking. Djokovic and Murray are like good pool players in that sense; they never force themselves to do anything spectacular. They’re by far the best at being OK.

The question for both men is the same as it was when the tournament began. Can Djokovic turn his game around in a week? Can Murray win a highly pressurized home-court event that he has never come close to winning before? In both of their cases, the signs have been modestly encouraging. Djokovic was more intense and vocal in his win over Thiem than he has been recently, and he immediately put a tight first-set loss behind him. Murray also started slowly against Cilic, and appeared to be wound even more tightly than normal through the first few games. But he, too, put that behind him.

We like to speculate about who would win a match when “both players are playing their best.” How about when no one is playing their best? The answer is probably the same.