The Poker Guru editorial team has followed Grand Slam tennis for years, particularly the way expectations can change once a tournament gets underway. Novak Djokovic entered the US Open as a strong favorite to progress, but Mariano Navone’s 4-hour and 36-minute five-set victory turned that expectation on its head. What looked like a straightforward opening-round matchup became one of the tournament’s biggest early surprises.
Before the match, pokerguru.lt/ reflected the general expectation that Djokovic would move comfortably into the next round. Navone had other ideas, pushing the match to five sets and eventually securing a remarkable victory after more than four and a half hours on court.
“It is unbelievable, and it means so much to me. Winning in five sets against this veteran is not something that happens every day.”
Navone said that on court after the match, and the statistics underline just how unexpected the result was.
Navone’s Score, His Place in History, and 4 Hours 36 Minutes of Tennis
Yardbarker reported the full scoreline as 7-6, 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, a match that consumed nearly five hours and confirmed what the first set could not have predicted. Navone is ranked 49th in the world — a solid professional, not a contender for Grand Slam headlines, or so the conventional read went. The gap between the two players on paper made the final two sets, taken decisively by the Argentine, all the more jarring. With that result, Navone became only the second Argentine player to eliminate Djokovic from a Grand Slam, joining Guillermo Coria, who managed the same in 2005. More than two decades separated the two moments.
The Weight of What Was Snapped
Djokovic arrived in New York as a four-time US Open champion and 39 years old. Those two facts alone framed every match he played here as something beyond ordinary competition. His record at this specific tournament in opening rounds had been immaculate. He had won 19 consecutive first-round matches across his previous appearances at the US Open, a streak that stretched back long enough to span entire generations of opponents. Against lower-ranked opposition in the early rounds of Grand Slams more broadly, his record stood at 37 wins without a single defeat. That figure had become less a statistic than an assumption. Navone, to his considerable credit, treated it as neither.
Cincinnati Offered a Warning No One Fully Heeded
The defeat did not arrive without prior signals. Before the US Open, Djokovic had already fallen in the opening round of the Cincinnati Masters, losing to Argentina’s Tiago Agustin Tirante. Back-to-back first-round exits to Argentine opponents on the American hardcourt swing is a pattern, not a coincidence. Navone capitalized on what the source describes as a grueling American summer, gradually turning the match in the later sets as Djokovic’s physical energy dropped. The first set belonged to Djokovic on the tiebreak. The next two went to Navone. What followed in the fourth and fifth sets was not competitive — the scorelines of 6-2 and 6-1 reflect a physical collapse that the Cincinnati loss had quietly foreshadowed.
Navone’s Reaction, Djokovic’s Farewell Gesture, and What Follows
On court, Navone was candid about the toll the match had taken even on the winner. “It is a dream, and now I have to recover, sleep and prepare,” he said, offering a measured account of what five sets against a four-time champion demands physically. The crowd response to Djokovic’s exit carried its own weight. Before leaving the court, the Serbian signed memorabilia for supporters — a scene that immediately prompted speculation about whether his long association with Flushing Meadows had just produced its final chapter.
Navone returns to court in two days. His second-round opponent will be the winner of the match between Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland and Italy’s Matteo Berrettini. Both are experienced hardcourt players capable of extending a match deep into its fifth set. Whether the Argentine can recover in time to produce another performance of that quality remains the live question.
The broader US Open men’s draw opens wider with Djokovic gone. His absence from the second round removes the gravitational pull his name always carries in tournament-winner markets. Navone has not simply won a match. He has altered the shape of the entire men’s event — and left open a question about one of the sport’s greatest careers that may not have a comfortable answer.
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