Djokovic loses a first round at a major for the first time since 2006, to Navone in five sets

Seventy-eight. That is how many grand slam main draws Novak Djokovic entered after his last first-round defeat, and he won the opening match in all 78 of them. The 79th ended on Sunday night in New York, where Mariano Navone, ranked 48 and unseeded, beat the fourth seed 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.

The records did not suggest this. Djokovic is 39, ranked 5 and seeded 4, a four-time champion in New York and 96-15 at the US Open across 19 previous visits, ten of which took him to the final. Navone is 25 and ranked 48, his career high of 29 dates to June 2024, and he had won 12 tour-level matches on hard courts against 32 defeats; his one tour title came on the clay of Bucharest in March. The two had never played each other. On the night the ledger read the other way. Navone won 165 of the 311 points, with 36 winners against 34 unforced errors, while Djokovic finished with 46 winners and 70 unforced errors, 10 aces and 10 double faults, and 55 percent of first serves in against Navone's 63.

Djokovic led the first set 4-1. Navone won the next three games to level at 4-4, the last four went with serve to 6-6, and he took the tiebreak 7-5. That became the pattern: whatever Djokovic built, Navone took back. The second set went to Djokovic 7-5 and the third 6-4, each on a single break of serve late in the set, and from two sets to one in front he won three more games in the match. Navone broke him five times across the last two sets, three in the fourth and two in the fifth, then served it out at 5-1 on his first match point.

The last time Djokovic lost a first round at a major was against Paul Goldstein at the 2006 Australian Open, when he was 18. All 24 of his grand slam titles came afterwards, four of them here, in 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2023. His season now reads 15-7: the Australian Open final and the Wimbledon semi-final on one side, defeats to Dino Prizmic in Rome and Thiago Agustin Tirante in Cincinnati on the other, and this is the second time in 2026 he has led a five-set match and lost it, after Joao Fonseca came back from two sets down at Roland Garros. Navone had lost all four of his previous five-setters, every one of them at a major. He plays the winner of Matteo Berrettini against Stan Wawrinka next.

Match tale, 30 August 2026, sources: US Open, api-tennis