Every era in sport ends twice — once statistically, and once unmistakably. At Flushing Meadows on Sunday night, the statistical and the unmistakable arrived together: Novak Djokovic, 39, lost in the first round of the US Open to Argentina’s Mariano Navone, the world number 48 — 7-6 (7/5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 over 4 hours and 36 minutes, Ahram Online reported.
The defeat ended a run of 78 consecutive Grand Slam first-round victories — a streak stretching back to Djokovic’s loss to Paul Goldstein at the 2006 Australian Open, when Navone was five years old. It is Djokovic’s earliest Grand Slam exit in twenty years.
The shape of the match
The scoreline tells the story of a match that turned rather than slipped. Djokovic took a tight first-set tiebreak; Navone answered by winning the second 7-5 and the third 6-4. When Djokovic levelled the fourth 6-2, the script seemed to be reasserting itself — the great champion finding the extra gear in a fifth set, as he has done more often than anyone in the sport’s history. Instead the fifth went 6-1 the other way, the night’s legs belonging entirely to the younger man.
It’s unbelievable. It’s a dream come true, I mean seriously, 100%. This incredible court, the biggest stage ... Now I have to recover. I think it’s almost 12 o’clock, so we have to go to sleep. — Mariano Navone, after defeating Novak Djokovic
What the number 78 actually measured
First-round streaks are the least glamorous records and among the most demanding: they measure not peak level but two decades of never once arriving unready — through injuries, era changes, and the accumulated target on a champion’s back. That is the record that fell on Sunday, and its fall reframes the question that has followed Djokovic all season: not whether he can still win seven matches in a fortnight, but how much longer he chooses to try.
For the tournament, the draw’s most decorated obstacle is gone by Monday morning — and for Navone, the reward is the hardest kind of prize in tennis: a career-defining win to recover from, with a second round arriving in less than 48 hours. As he said himself, first: sleep.
The anatomy of an upset that wasn’t sudden
Five-set defeats of great champions rarely announce themselves in the first hour, and this one didn’t: Djokovic won the opening tiebreak and, two sets later, was still trading blows evenly enough to take the fourth set 6-2. What the 4-hour-36-minute duration measures is the real mechanism of the result — attrition. A first-round match stretched to nearly five hours converts a ranking gap into a stamina question, and stamina questions at 39 answer themselves differently than they did at 29. The 6-1 fifth set was not a collapse of skill but the arithmetic of legs.
For the world number 48, the win is the kind that reorders a career from the outside in: prize money and ranking points are the least of it next to the proof, now permanent, that he belongs on the sport’s biggest court on its biggest stage. His post-match words — a dream, the biggest stage, and then, disarmingly, the need to sleep before a second round less than 48 hours away — were the sound of a player refusing to let the moment cost him the tournament.
For tennis, the record that fell is the one that best measured an era: 78 consecutive Grand Slam first rounds won, across twenty years, is a monument to preparation as much as talent. Records of peak performance fall to better peaks; records of relentlessness only fall to time.
Frequently asked questions
Who beat Djokovic and what was the score?
Mariano Navone of Argentina, ranked 48th, won 7-6 (7/5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 in 4 hours 36 minutes in the US Open first round.
How significant is the defeat?
It ended Djokovic’s streak of 78 straight Grand Slam first-round wins, dating to the 2006 Australian Open — his earliest major exit in 20 years.
How old is Djokovic now?
39. The defeat sharpens questions about how much longer he will contest the majors.
What did Navone say afterwards?
“It’s unbelievable. It’s a dream come true, I mean seriously, 100%. This incredible court, the biggest stage ... Now I have to recover. I think it’s almost 12 o’clock, so we have to go to sleep” — a champion’s night summarised by a man due back on court within 48 hours.
When did Djokovic last lose a Grand Slam opener?
At the 2006 Australian Open, to Paul Goldstein — twenty years and 78 consecutive Grand Slam first-round victories ago. Sunday night’s five-set defeat at Flushing Meadows is therefore his earliest exit at any major championship since that match, two decades of relentless opening-round reliability ended in one late evening.
