Tormented souls in the vastness of New York’s Arthur Ashe, where down below he suffers, wanders, vomits, cries, dissolves and, finally, a legend falls. The image is heartbreaking. It is Novak Djokovic wounded, helpless and sobbing, overcome by the Argentine Mariano Navone, his own body, and the circumstances: 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, and 6-1. Time flies, the years weigh heavier on him (he is already 39) and despite his incomparable rebelliousness, his constant desire, still being there, and trying once more, the Serbian is running out of ammunition and strength. Nole leaves exhausted, defeated, and during the final stretch of the night, at the mercy of his opponent. It is 4h 25m of torment for him, the man who used to escape from everything. Seeing it to believe it.
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He hadn’t said goodbye so early to a major tournament since 2006, when he lost in the first round of the Australian Open and the champion had not yet emerged. He had also never lost in the first round at Flushing Meadows. “It’s obvious that I was feeling terrible, and that’s something I’ve been dragging through practically all the matches this year,” he would later explain, after an episode that could well have been recorded as one of those times when things get ugly but he ends up saving it. Not this time. Game over. It is a powerless Djokovic who first feints and then collapses. No remedy. Pure and hard agony. He can’t do it and his wife buries her head between her legs. She doesn’t want to look. Pain on his bench and disbelief in the stands.
On the other side of the net, Navone (25 years old and 39th in the world, very academic) hits with faith and detects the progressive weakening of the Balkan, who has stomach discomfort and nausea all the time, pain in one foot and also in the lower back. Everything comes together. Medical assistance is useless. He pales. The speed of his serve drops and after missing a break in the fourth set and conceding eight consecutive games — an 11-1 run — he barely tries to hold back tears in the fifth. He’s no longer in black, white doesn’t revitalize him either. It’s a historic frame. The winner will keep it: “What just happened is crazy. Novak is the greatest of all time!”.
Two weeks earlier he had also been overwhelmed by another Argentine, Thiago Agustín Tirante, in the first round of Cincinnati. Even so, the day before he said the preparation had been adequate, although he also recalled the demands of five-set matches. “I was suffering since the fourth game,” he specifies at midnight. “The vomiting is a serious problem. Then, my whole body basically starts to break down, with cramps and pain… The back and shoulder said enough, and I couldn’t close the match,” elaborates the man from Belgrade, who probes without finding the answer: “What I’m trying to do is really find out what’s happening and how far I can go if I keep like this.”
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Novak Djokovic vs time. Terrible this video. pic.twitter.com/N8kbo76gYh
— 𝐉𝐃 (@JuannDis) August 31, 2026
Djokovic will always remember the evening as one of the most torturous of his career, already wrapped in questions before the event and logically, now even more. His tennis is unquestionable, still exquisite, current; not so his current physical condition, considerably weakened. Despite everything, he managed to beat Sinner in January and played the Australian final, and at Wimbledon he had a meritorious run that was interrupted by the Italian in the semifinals. The closeness of the score softened that afternoon the real gap that exists today between one and the other. There he admitted: “Jannik gave me a beating.”
The New York option now evaporates and the fan wonders how far he will go, if he will fulfill his wish to attend the Los Angeles Games in 2028, and if his morale (that winning genetics) will be able to absorb blows of this magnitude. No one has known how to recover like him, but the current reality pressures him: he is virtually out of the top ten — for the first time since 2018, then immersed in a deep crisis — and he would not qualify for the Masters Cup either. In any case, nothing undermines him more than that feeling of having succumbed to his body, the temple that has brought him so much success and that for a couple of seasons now has been playing tricks on him.
“I want more, I wish I were younger,” he admitted the previous summer, precisely at Arthur Ashe. Another year fades away, and next year he will turn 40. To forget: “It has been horrible.”
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