Mariano Navone beat Novak Djokovic 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 on Sunday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The Navone Djokovic upset ran four hours and 36 minutes, which the Associated Press called the longest opening match of any major in Djokovic’s career. Djokovic had been 19-0 in US Open first rounds. He led two sets to one on Sunday, then won three games the rest of the way.
The 39-year-old vomited on court, grabbed at his left foot in what looked like cramp, and played the fifth set with tears on his face. Rain came early and the roof closed over the court. By the end a full stadium was standing for a man who had managed three games in two sets.
Fifteen Days, Two Argentines
On August 15 in Mason, Ohio, Djokovic lost his opening match at the Cincinnati Open to Thiago Agustin Tirante, a 25-year-old Argentine sitting at a career-high No. 50. That one ran 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 across two hours and 44 minutes in heavy heat. Djokovic took the first set without much trouble, then dropped to his hands and knees between points, called for a medical timeout, and sat under ice towels while a doctor looked him over. ESPN reported he had been playing his first match since the Wimbledon semi-finals.
Sunday’s opponent was a 25-year-old Argentine ranked 49th. One place apart on the list, the same age, the same passport, and the same shape to the match. Djokovic led both early. His body went first both times.
Where the Price Went
Our post on the Cincinnati match quoted the Oddschecker pair at Djokovic -425 against Tirante +290. Those two sum past 106, so the book was holding six and a half points of margin. Strip it out. The market had Djokovic at roughly 76 percent.
The numbers got shorter after that. DraftKings posted Djokovic -542 with Navone +373, which strips to 80 percent. Dimers listed the pair at -538 and +420, or about 81. Two other outlets had him at -600, which lands near 82. Whichever pair you prefer, the market moved four to six points toward a man whose body had quit on him in Ohio fifteen days earlier.
Dimers is worth a separate line. The simulation site put Djokovic at 81 percent before Cincinnati and 81 percent before Sunday. Its estimate did not move at all.
The Case for the Number
Start with the format. Best-of-five rewards the stronger player, which is most of why majors throw up fewer shocks than Masters events do. The ATP had Djokovic at 42-12 in five-setters against Navone’s 0-4, and Navone had won only 12 of his 41 tour-level matches on hard courts. Two more weeks had also gone into Djokovic’s legs since Ohio, and the New York match started under lights instead of in the afternoon sun.
The ratings were friendlier to him than the board was. Tennis Abstract’s hard-court Elo, as reported by SportsBettingDime, had Djokovic near 2013 against Navone’s 1730, a gap implying something like 85 percent in best-of-three. No price on the board went that high. So the market was already marking Djokovic down against a pure ratings model. The markdown just wasn’t deep enough.
What the Navone Djokovic Upset Doesn’t Settle
Two matches. Nobody should build anything on that.
What the pair share is the variable that decided them, and it’s one a price struggles to hold. A number knows a ranking, a surface, a format, a head-to-head and whatever form the market has already absorbed. It doesn’t know whether a 39-year-old will be able to breathe in the fourth set. Our underdog betting philosophy page is largely about the distance between what a price is assembled from and what ends up settling a match. Tennis shows that distance more plainly than most sports, because a player has no teammates to hide a bad day behind. How often the longer side actually comes in varies a lot by sport, and this is part of the reason.
The durability question is now open. Our Cincinnati piece argued that a healthy Djokovic beats Tirante four times in five and the price was a fair estimate of a match that never happened. That still reads right. What has shifted is how safely anyone can treat the healthy version as the base case. The seed beside his name read fourth only because Jannik Sinner withdrew.
Djokovic afterward, to reporters: “I didn’t enjoy myself.” That was his 20th US Open. He had never left one in the first round before. Navone plays Matteo Berrettini or Stan Wawrinka next.