Was it a foregone conclusion before the crunch moments had even arrived?
Two matches before Ash Barty became the first Australian woman in 44 years to claim a home grand slam, another of her vanquished opponents explained the dilemma with admirable candour: "I think she's definitely living in everyone's head a little bit."
That was Jessica Pegula, who'd just been wiped off the court in an hour — a 6-2, 6-0 quarter-final demolition.
It was of a piece with Barty's total dominance of her preliminary opponents, dispatched in average match times of 61 minutes, only one Barty service game lost along the way.
Perhaps we will look back on this as the Australian sporting summer in which the only people who disappeared faster than English tailenders were Barty's opponents, but Pegula's comment showed how effortlessly Barty inverts the cliches of Australian sport: she never stops smiling, yet rivals fear her.
In a final whose scoreline hinted at only limited resistance from the loser, American Danielle Collins was dogged, brave, and in patches, not a little brilliant.
Collins is often described as a "hustler", which in tennis can generally be taken to mean that she didn't rise through ritzy academies, insulated from reality by family wealth. Among other hurdles, she has overcome endometriosis. She's as tough as teak.
Against Barty, it still wasn't enough.
Was Barty in her head, as Pegula put it? One-eyed and impolite spectators certainly were. In her best moments, Collins channelled the fury she felt at the crowd's interjections and threw it back at Barty with interest. Two of those moments shaped the result.
The first was in Barty's third service game of the match. Swinging wildly for big winners, Collins cracked a brutal backhand across the court, not just winning a break opportunity but sowing seeds of doubt in the Australian.
It will be forgotten quickly, but in that instant, the contest teetered stressfully.
Barty's response was always going to guide what followed. She steadied herself and held with an ace whose effect was threefold: the survival of her mini-ordeal seemed to free her up; Collins, meanwhile, tensed up and conceded a break in her next service game; the crowd was so relieved by Collins's crucial error that they cheered the crucial double fault.
In context, was the latter item forgivable? Not in Collins's eyes.
Hence the second 'moment' on which the contest pivoted. The minute she walked out for the second set, Collins was breathing fire — not just windmilling winners with an awesome indignance, but bouncing around the baseline and baiting the arena, her eyes as wild as her forehand.
She broke Barty twice and led 5-1. All tournament, Barty had worked over her opponents like a master thief picking a flimsy lock. Taking down Collins was now more like defusing a bomb.
How did Barty stay so calm? A lesser player might have been tempted to concede the set, take a strategic bathroom break and reset. Not Barty. She dug in, broke back twice and forced a tiebreak, taking Collins's surging confidence and tossing it into the ether.
The tiebreak that settled the title was a microcosm of Barty's tournament: her dominance was quickly established and overwhelming; her opponent was simply dejected. Even after regulation wins over unheralded players, Barty often talks of suffocating the strengths of her opponents and refusing to allow them easy points. Being on the other end of that effort is another thing Pegula had described well: "You feel pretty helpless … it doesn't feel good."
By the end, Collins certainly didn't feel good. In a flash, the runner-up trophy was in her hands and tears welled. You could sense in her a sort of bafflement at how quickly she went from dictating terms to packing her bags.
Unsung in all of this is Barty's coach Craig Tyzzer, who is not one for Dean Boxall-style commotion.
"He's changed my career and he's changed my life," Barty said of him once the trophy was in her keeping.
Tyzzer says the beauty of Barty is how imperceptible her form slumps are.
"I think it's her ability to — on the days when she's not playing well — still look like she's playing well and still be able to compete," he said last week.
In essence, Barty did that very thing in a grand slam final. She could have played far better tennis and it didn't even matter. That is a different rung of the ladder to be on.
You could also say that it was a simple case of the world number one doing what the best should do. But in grand slam tennis, favouritism is no guarantee; it is seven years since Serena Williams was the last top seed to win at Melbourne Park.
And it was only a day since Dylan Alcott's fairytale final went awry. Like everyone else, he loves Barty.
"She's just the best human, first and foremost," Alcott said.
"It just so happens that she can play tennis."
The Australian Open organisers have cocked up to truly extraordinary lengths in the last fortnight, but they got one thing stunningly right on Barty's behalf. Sitting in the front row, 1978 champion Chris O'Neil looked likely to present the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup. It would have been appropriate. It was the predictable move.
Instead, Evonne Goolagong appeared from the shadows, as she had when Barty's career was at its lowest ebb. Watching the two champions weaving one another into a joint story of Indigenous sporting greatness was tennis in its best possible light.
And that is Ash Barty, really — greatness and light.
