Novak Djokovic out of U.S. Open to Mariano Navone on harrowing night for all-time great

NEW YORK — Novak Djokovic is out of the U.S. Open after losing in New York in a way he never has before.

In a stunning loss that snapped a streak of 77 first-round wins at Grand Slams, Djokovic lost in five sets to Argentina’s Mariano Navone, a top-50 stalwart who has beaten some formidable players but never a true great.

Sunday night in Arthur Ashe Stadium, he took down a lethargic and then limping, vomiting and then cramping, roaring and then resigned Djokovic 7-6(5) 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 in four hours and 36 minutes.

Djokovic last lost a first-round match at a Grand Slam at the 2006 Australian Open, when he was the world No. 76. Since then, he navigated the terrain of major openers as well as anyone, until a harrowing night that left him contemplating his own sporting mortality more closely than ever.

And yet, through a 73-minute first set and for more than four hours of a long opening night, almost nothing about this match made sense, other than Djokovic’s being 39.

That is well beyond when nearly every all-time great before him has ceased being competitive.

Navone sunk a dagger into Djokovic in the second game of the final set, pushing him around the court, then drawing him to the net. As Djokovic approached, Navone sent a backhand down the line that Djokovic couldn’t half-volley back over the net. Djokovic staggered on his next steps, then limped and winced through the next games, seemingly becoming too old to compete in real time as the energy of the packed stadium grew funereal.

Djokovic’s wife, Jelena, and his children, Stefan and Tara, sat courtside, growing more glum by the game.

Shortly after walking off the court, an exhausted and worn Djokovic stood outside the locker room and spoke of what he had experienced through the night.

“An awful feeling on the court for me,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve been carrying unfortunately pretty much every match this year. Vomiting, throwing up, a serious issue there. And then my whole body, you know, starts to collapse. Cramping, pain. The back just gave up in the end, and the shoulder, and I couldn’t close it out.

He said he had struggled since the fourth game of the match, though he tried not to take too much credit away from Navone, calling him “a nice guy, a fighter.”

He said he did not know whether he could fix the medical issue that was causing his body to break down on the court.

“I’m trying, man, I’m trying,” he said. “Let’s, let’s see.”

Djokovic had gotten off to a fast start, smacking three aces in his first two service games and sprinting to a 3-0 lead. Quickly, though, Navone started to get his teeth into rallies, forcing Djokovic to hit more balls than he wanted to on a dankly humid but hardly hot night.

The weather became largely irrelevant seven games into the match, when rain began to fall, the roof closed and the air conditioning clicked on. By then, though, Djokovic had given back that early break of serve and appeared to be struggling physically.

In the seventh game of the third set, he vomited in a bin on the side of the court in the middle of the game

When points stretched beyond a half-dozen shots, Djokovic often leaned over onto his knees before the next one. Throughout the night, Djokovic had a significant edge over Navone on points that were four shots or fewer. Anything longer than that, the edge went to Navone. When Djokovic’s serve was not enough to get a free or cheap point, and when his return was too much for Navone to do the same, what ensued were energy-sapping rallies that slowly drained Djokovic’s life force.

Still, this all seemed strange seven weeks after Djokovic reached the Wimbledon semifinals with a vintage five-set triumph over Félix Auger-Aliassime. There was the two-decade first-round win streak. Also, as good as Djokovic is on any court, he has long been virtually unbeatable at night and indoors, which is how he got to play the match Sunday night once the raindrops began to fall.

He is the best hard-court player of the modern era. Navone makes his living mostly on clay, the surface on which he won his lone ATP Tour title to date.

Djokovic has won 101 titles, third all time behind Jimmy Connors and Roger Federer. If Djokovic could have made a list of possible first-round opponents that would allow him to work his way into the tournament, Navone might very well have been on it. This was just his third time in the U.S. Open main draw.

He’d won just one match in the year’s final Grand Slam. He’d never played on Ashe, the court where Djokovic has played nearly all of his U.S. Open matches for the past 15 years and where he has won the title four times.

Early on, it became clear Djokovic was going to have only one path to survival. He had to play aggressively and keep points short, even though he was rusty after only playing one match since his loss in the Wimbledon semifinal to Jannik Sinner.

For Djokovic, that loss in straight sets to a one-time protege appeared to break his spirit. Late in the match, a fan tried to reassure him he could hang with Sinner, the world No. 1.

“Maybe 10 years ago,” he muttered.

When it was over, Djokovic went on vacation and had little contact with anyone other than his family. He hit tennis balls with his wife and children, but preparing for a run on the hard courts of the U.S. could wait.

He returned to professional tennis at the Cincinnati Open earlier this month and looked unready, losing his first match to Thiago Tirante, struggling physically in the heat and humidity. After, he made a vague reference to a medical condition he said he had been managing the last couple of years, though he declined to elaborate.

After arriving in New York, Djokovic said during his pre-tournament news conference that the early loss in Cincinnati had given him more time to train for the U.S. Open, one of the few tournaments he truly cares about.

“Two weeks, to really train and get my body and mind into the right state, prepared for what’s coming up,” he said in a news conference. “If you ask me if I’m prepared, I feel like I am, you know, as best as I can be, but it’s different training and then getting out on the Arthur Ashe Stadium and playing best of five. You don’t normally play best of five in practice sessions.”

He noted, too, how challenging opening-round matches had become for him in recent years.

“Hopefully I can overcome, you know, the first hurdle and build from there,” he said.

That proved far more difficult than even he could have imagined. Navone simply would not go away quietly. Not in the first set, when he did what used to be nearly impossible against Djokovic and beat him in the tiebreak.

Not early in the third set, when he saved 2 break points and held serve. After that, Djokovic sat on his chair rolling two ice bags on his head.

And not early in the fourth set, after Djokovic lulled him into some sloppy errors to break his serve and bring the finish line into sight. Navone sent Djokovic on the run in the next game and broke him right back. A game later, he broke him once more as Djokovic’s body gave out.

He took a medical timeout ahead of the fifth set. A trainer massaged his lower back, trying to prepare him for a last stand.

By then, the larger Djokovic narrative of the past two seasons was taking shape.

He has often spoken of how difficult Grand Slam tennis and its best-of-five set format have become for him. He seemingly has only so many hours available to expend. If he uses them up in the first week by playing extra sets, he has little left in his gas tank in the second half of the second week when the competition is that much harder.

Even if he had won Sunday night, his 2026 U.S. Open already seemed doomed to an early ending sometime midway through the third set. By the fifth game of the fifth set, tears began to drip from Djokovic’s eyes.

He said he was sorry he had not performed as well as he wanted to, just as he had been five years ago, when, one match from a calendar Grand Slam, he played one of his worst matches of the year in the U.S. Open final. The New York crowd cheered for him as they never had before and he sobbed on the side of the court.

On this night, as he walked off, he turned to every side of the stadium and flashed a heart sign with his fingers

Earlier this summer, Djokovic released a documentary, “The Wolf in Winter,” about his refusal to submit to the approaching end of the most storied careers.

On Sunday night in New York, the kind of night that has been vanishingly rare in Djokovic’s career left him facing the darkness of the unknown as he never has.

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