US Open Day 1 - Can Djokovic take much more of this?

**Catherine Whitaker** (0:11)
Hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, coming to you from New York on day one of the 2026 US Open, the final major of the tennis season. I'm Catherine Whitaker. Alongside me, as always, are David Law and Matt Roberts. And together, we are The Tennis Podcast, bringing you daily shows right the way through until the end of the tournament in 14 short days from now. It is half past midnight as we record this show on day one of the Open, and we have all just shared the very unfamiliar experience of watching 39-year-old Novak Djokovic lose in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament for only the third time in his more than two-decade career, and the first time since January 2006 He was beaten tonight by World No. 49, Mariano Navone, 7-5, 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 in a grueling match on the Arthur Ashtadian that finished up just a few minutes ago. David, so much of what we saw tonight was actually very familiar, the Djokovic theatrics, the improbable revivals, the running forehands hit from full splits. We've seen all of that for years from Djokovic. We've come to expect it. And yet we've also come to expect him to get there in the end, to get over the line somehow. Certainly in majors and against players ranked 49 in the world. But what we saw for the final hour of tonight's match was not the same Djokovic that we've been watching for years. Not even the same one that we've been watching this year.
For me, anyway, that was an incredibly tough watch. Certainly the last hour of tonight. I don't know how you experienced it.

**David Law** (2:10)
Yeah, it was truly sad to witness that. And I think that's how he felt as well, because he was rendered completely unable to play for a couple of sets there at the end. He was fighting it throughout. He was fighting his own body from a very early stage. And the way he described it in the sort of press comments that he's just given is that he starts to feel nauseous.
And he was actually fully sick tonight on the court, which was a really gruesome scene. Don't remind me, David.

**Catherine Whitaker** (2:42)
His ESPN ran a slow-mo replay of that.

**David Law** (2:47)
Yes.
And then he gets more and more dehydrated. His body starts to lock up. And he just can't really cope with what this sport is asking him to do anymore. And particularly in New York, in the sort of humid conditions, he hates the humidity. He always has, really. But he's 39 years old. You know, it's a very particular thing. He's trying to pull off in a very physical way. And it overcame him, really, tonight. And that's what's unusual. That's the unusual part. Usually he's able to find something, choreograph something almost with a crowd, conduct a situation, make the opponent nervous and fall off and then get his own adrenaline going. Something. He can usually find something. But there was a look of resignation about him in the latter stages of the match, which I'm just not used to seeing. I mean, he has retired in the past and he said he considered it tonight in the earlier sets, but he just didn't feel in the fourth and fifth he could retire. But to see him crying mid-match, and I can only guess as to why he's crying. But my guess is that it's the realization that I just can't do it. I'm trying hard and I'm at a grand slam. I've got 20,000 people chanting my name to give them more and to provide more and to try to push myself more, and I just can't. And maybe he's sort of seeing his own tennis and athletic mortality really at the top level in real time.
I'm only guessing, but that's kind of what it looked like and felt like out there.

**Matt Roberts** (4:37)
Yeah, it felt like the moment.
We're all going to look back on as the time Djokovic couldn't do it anymore, to be honest. Like, there were two things about this that were really unusual and different from his Grand Slam defeats recently. Obviously, the end, as you've talked about, when we've seen him lose at Grand Slams, typically, it's either been a defiant and brilliant performance early in the draw, like against Fonseca at the French Open, where he was still going after almost five hours, playing really well, looking strong, just beaten by a great performance, or it's been at the end of a tournament against a sinner or an Alcaraz, and he's not had much left against them. But it's been a sort of vaguely competitive defeat, but he's been amazing along the way to get there, and he's defied everything. So it was very different from that sense. But to me, I think the thing that was most different was how early he looked gone in this match.