Alcaraz Ready to Rule NYC, Father Time Catching Novak? | US Open Something Major Round 1 | EP 209

**Steve Johnson** (0:00)
All right, everyone.

**Sam** (0:00)
Boy, I hated that start. All right, everyone. Welcome back to Something Major. Today's episode, we're going to recap all the first round matches from the US Open.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:12)
Jack, John, Stevie and Sam got close a few times, never won a slam, Nothing Major.

**Sam** (0:18)
All right, we are back. We are all in New York. Got John Isner, myself and Steve Johnson live from his giant suite in New York, only guy in the episode to have a suite. Of course, Charlie Fox and the Suits are with us as well as the first round of the US Open has completed. We got to start with Novak, right? Novak loses. This is a couple of days ago now.
Also an epic five setter, four hours, 36 minutes to Navone.
Stevie, I'm going to start with you. This match had a little bit of everything. A typical Novak match as of late, I guess you would say drama filled, going the distance, he's throwing up, what's your takeaway with the Novak match?

**Steve Johnson** (1:02)
Yeah, it's a bit confusing. And I really thought, I mean, we talked about it on last week's pod, really, that I thought this was going to be a different story than what happened in Cincinnati. I thought he got his like, you know, his like bad match out of the way in Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago, where he didn't look physically, you know, up to his standards. But I was surprised to see, I mean, generally, you are so used to seeing Novak, you just find a way to gut out those types of matches. I mean, he didn't look good physically, but he still usually finds a way to win. And that's kind of like the last thing that you think of when you think of Novak. He's not going to win out, you know, win those tough matches. So I was shocked. He didn't look good, physically look bad. The game really wasn't that good. I don't know, you know, how bad he was feeling at the beginning of the match, but then he goes up two sets to one. And you're like, okay, like he's going to find a way. He's going to have a couple of days off and you know, all these things and he just, I mean, we haven't seen him lose in a first round, I think in a slam since like 2006 or something like absolutely crazy. So it is so weird to see him out of the draw.
It's a little deflating for the tournament to be honest, like see him out on a Sunday night. Like it was, it was strange. It was very weird. Yeah.

**Sam** (2:12)
Still impressive. We got to remember he's 39 years old. That was four hours, 36 minutes. Steve, not that you were saying it wasn't impressive.

**Steve Johnson** (2:19)
It's pretty nuts.

**Sam** (2:20)
John, this is back to back tournaments now. Cincinnati, he was sick. Now US Open, he wasn't feeling right. You saw him throw up like four times. I don't really know what the solution is for the guy, but there's obviously he's got like an issue right now with his body, which we've literally never seen before.

**John Isner** (2:37)
Yeah. I mean, look, he's not, this isn't the best version of Novak. We know that at 39 years old, you can't expect him to be as good as he was in years past. But to me, this isn't, I don't know, it seems like he's dealing with some sort of acute illness. He can't quite get over. So to me, this is more of he's dealing with some sort of illness as opposed to, oh, he's completely done at 39 years old.
No one knows what he's dealing with. If he can somehow get over this and get back to 100 percent health, I think we will see him going relatively deep in grand slams going forward if he still has to keep playing these big tournaments. But for right now, it's this illness that's doing him in. I mean, this throwing up all over the court like he did and looking as bad as he did in Cincinnati, that's not just a product of being old. That's a product of him just being sick right now. Something's a mess. Exactly right.

**Sam** (3:36)
No, look, both of you guys are right. And I think people need to remember because I feel like so much of the talking points around Novak is, he's getting older, which he is. I don't know if he's going to win a slam. So all four slams have been played this year. He did make the finals of Australia and he made the semifinals of Wimbledon.