Suffering Djokovic Crashes Out & Nobody Understands My Prediction | US Open 2026

**Gill Gross** (0:01)
Hey, everyone, Gill Gross here, a little emergency episode post-US Open Day 1 Because for the first time since 2006, Novak Djokovic has lost in the opening round of a slam. For the first time ever, he's lost a first-round match at the US Open. Mariano Navone beats him in five sets. And one more first that I have to share. The last time there were no members of the Big Three in the second round of a major, it was 2003 Quite remarkable, pretty tough to watch last night as Novak Djokovic's body failed him in pretty much every way possible. There was puking involved. It was a humid night in New York. Of course, he was sweating quite a bit. That presents a cramping risk. I think that was probably the biggest problem towards the end of the match, although really, from the very start, from the word go, Djokovic's movement wasn't up to par. His endurance, stamina, shot tolerance, all that was not up to standards. And he was playing a guy in Mariano Navone who is very well equipped to take advantage of exactly that. In fact, it is his primary and chief strength as a tennis player, his fitness, his legs. That's the only weapon that Mariano Navone really possesses is his legs. And he uses them. He did not take on a lot of risk. He tried to keep the ball in the court. He made things physical. That's what he's good at doing. He did not need to change anything. I don't even think he really had to execute his game at the highest level, meaning, I don't think his performance was even by his standards, all that good.
But Djokovic had an expiration in the match, ultimately. He had trouble separating early because of the physical gap. This was a legs mismatch, is really what I'm trying to say. That was clear early, and then it hit a point late. What really happened, if we want to talk about the match itself, Djokovic lost his serve. And Djokovic's path to winning the match was leaning on the serve. He went up two sets in a break because he was getting a ton of free points. Because Navone, who is really a pretty pure clay court player, has developed a very particular style of returning, and has not really developed his fast court returning. You could see how rushed he was on his forehand return. Djokovic, with his deadly world class slice serve, was picking Navone apart by serving it hard into his forehand. And it almost won Novak the match. Again, he was up two sets, end of break. It looked like for a moment he was stabilizing physically, and then as soon as that went away, it was really when the serve, and I think Novak was having back problems and shoulder problems and cramping problems, obviously energy problems, when the serve went away, now there was no getting away from those neutral baseline rallies, those physical points. That spelled doom for Novak.
For Navone, just because I like to get nerdy, I'm, you know, this is maybe not so relevant. This isn't a major storyline. We're going to get to the Djokovic retirement piece in a moment. But first, you know, Navone, really all he had to do was make a ton of returns and he was going to win the match. There was a point in time where it seemed like he wasn't going to manage to do that. And I think that's because he spent his whole life standing really far behind the baseline, letting these clay courts slow down the bounce and then taking full swings at the ball. He's never really developed a pure return of serve, an abbreviated return of serve or a chip return. Because technically, tactically, the right play there would have been for Navone to chip returns. Just get it back, right? That is the only objective. You do not need to really worry too much about the quality of return. Get it back and then try to dig out the plus one shot and get into the rally. You know, really use the legs and the physicality. But Navone has never been forced to develop a chip return because he's played so much on clay. He does not have it. He does not use it. You can't really back up to the fence against Novak on hard court either. That gives him so many pathways to use the slice serve dragging off the court. And obviously that would give him so many pathways to point shortening. So Navone couldn't really stand back, couldn't really chip the return. So he was forced to stand up, not on the baseline, but not as far back as he would like to be. And then he was rushed on the return constantly. He had no solution until Djokovic's serve speed dropped off. That was the solution. From there, Navone took off.