NEW YORK — Novak Djokovic did not go easy on himself when assessing the listless way he performed from the start of the U.S. Open, pointing to his sloppy serving as the main reason his bid to repeat as the men’s singles champion at the final Grand Slam tournament of the year surprisingly ended in the third round Friday night.
“I have played some of the worst tennis I have ever played, honestly,” Djokovic said. “Serving — by far — the worst ever.”
With 14 double-faults, raising his tournament total to 32, Djokovic bowed out with a 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 loss to 28th-seeded Alexei Popyrin of Australia, another shocking result at Flushing Meadows one night after 2022 champion Carlos Alcaraz exited.
It’s only the third time in the Open era that two of the top three men’s seeds at the U.S. Open are gone before the fourth round; the other instances were in 1973 and 2000.
“It was just an awful match for me,” said the second-seeded Djokovic. “I wasn’t playing even close to my best. It’s not good to be in that kind of state where you feel OK physically, and of course you’re motivated because it’s a Grand Slam, but you just are not able to find your game. That’s it. The game is falling apart, and I guess you have to accept that tournaments like this happen.”
Not often for him, though.
After all, Djokovic was trying to become the first player in tennis history with 25 Grand Slam singles titles. Instead, after knee surgery in June, the 37-year-old finishes a year without at least one major championship for the first time since 2017. Before that, it hadn’t happened since 2010.
Also of note: 2024 now becomes the first season since 2002 in which none of the Big Three of men’s tennis — Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer — earned a Grand Slam trophy. Federer last played a major tournament in 2021 and retired the following year at age 41, his Grand Slam title tally at 20. The 38-year-old Nadal has been seriously limited by injuries for the better part of two years, playing just one Grand Slam in 2022 (he lost in the second round of the Australian Open) and this year (he lost in the first round at the French Open, where he was won 14 of his 22 major titles.
The third-round exit equals Djokovic’s worst showing at Flushing Meadows; the only other occasions he was beaten that early at the U.S. Open came in 2005 and 2006. The man who defeated Djokovic 18 years ago, International Tennis Hall of Fame member Lleyton Hewitt, is now Australia’s Davis Cup captain and was sitting in Popyrin’s guest box in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Djokovic, Popyrin said, “wasn’t playing his best tennis; I was waiting for him to kind of step up.”
“I didn’t want to be one of those moments where Novak kind of stepped up and came back from two-sets-to-love down,” Popyrin said. “That was going through my head.”
Djokovic has reached the final in Ashe 10 times, leaving with the title in 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2023.
On Friday, though, he was sluggish and emotionally flat, perhaps residual fatigue after collecting his first Olympic gold medal for Serbia by beating Alcaraz in the final at the Paris Games early this month.
“Obviously, it had an effect,” Djokovic said. “I spent a lot of energy winning the gold, and I did arrive to New York just not feeling fresh mentally and physically. But because it’s the U.S. Open, I gave it a shot and I tried my best. I mean, I didn’t have any physical issues. I just felt out of gas. And you could see that with the way I played.”
The No. 3-seeded Alcaraz entered the U.S. Open as the favorite on the hard courts of New York, having won the French Open on the red clay of Roland Garros and Wimbledon on the grass of the All England Club. The 21-year-old Spaniard, who lost to Djokovic in the Olympic final, acknowledged his energy was lower than he realized after getting eliminated by 74th-ranked Botic van de Zandschulp 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 on Thursday night.
“I woke up this morning and showed my girlfriend straightaway, in shock. It was crazy. Results like that happen,” said Popyrin, who had never set foot on the playing surface in 23,000-plus capacity Ashe until about 20 minutes before taking on Djokovic. “I thought to myself: Why not me today?”
Djokovic replaced Alcaraz as the money-line pick to take the men’s title, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, but that status didn’t last long at all. Now the only past U.S. Open men’s champion remaining before the tournament is even halfway over is No. 5 Daniil Medvedev, whose lone major title came in 2021. He plays No. 31 Flavio Cobolli on Saturday in the third round.
For the 25-year-old Popyrin, this represents a real breakthrough: He had been 0-3 against Djokovic — including losses at the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year — and 0-6 in third-round matches at majors. The strong-serving Aussie is playing as well as ever, though, coming off the biggest title of his career less than three weeks ago at a hard-court tournament in Montreal, where he picked up five wins against opponents in the top 20 of the ATP Tour rankings.
Everything was working against Djokovic. Popyrin was terrific at the net, going 10-for-10 on serve-and-volley approaches and 25-for-36 overall on points when he pushed forward. Djokovic, in contrast, only won the point on 19 of his 40 trips to the net, in part because Popyrin kept flipping passing shots by him.
Popyrin took big cuts with his powerful forehand, accumulating 22 of his 50 total winners with that shot.
And he broke Djokovic five times, including for a lead of 3-2 in the fourth set. That game felt titanic, lasting more than 10 minutes and including four break chances for Popyrin, who converted the last with an inside-out forehand to close a 22-stroke exchange, then rocked back on his heels, clenched both fists and let out a roar. He took Djokovic’s next service game, too, to make it 5-2.
The first time Popyrin served for the match, he faltered, allowing Djokovic to break. The second time, Popyrin finished the deal, holding at love when Djokovic sent a forehand long.
Now Popyrin will try to reach his first Grand Slam quarterfinal by getting past No. 20 Frances Tiafoe, who advanced Friday afternoon with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3 win over No. 13 Ben Shelton in a matchup between two Americans that took 4 hours, 3 minutes to complete.
“If he serves well, plays well, he can beat anybody,” Djokovic said about Popyrin. “Look, Alcaraz is out. I’m out. Some big upsets. The draw is opening up.”
Tiafoe, 26, is in the fourth round of the U.S. for the fifth year in a row. His best Grand Slam run was a 2022 semifinal appearance in New York.
Shelton and Tiafoe are two of five Americans in the top 20 of the ATP Tour rankings, making some think the country’s long wait for a men’s champion at a major could end someday soon. Andy Roddick’s 2003 U.S. Open trophy was the most recent Grand Slam title for an man from the United States.
The highest-ranked U.S. man at the moment, No. 12 Taylor Fritz, moved on with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 win against Francisco Comesana and now will take on three-time major finalist Casper Ruud, who beat Juncheng Shang in five sets after dropping the first two. Yet another American, Brandon Nakashima, who is currently No. 50, advanced by eliminating Wimbledon semifinalist Lorenzo Musetti 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4).
One men’s fourth-round matchup established Friday was No. 6 Andrey Rublev vs. No. 9 Grigor Dimitrov.
AP photo by Seth Wenig / Coco Gauff returns a shot to Elina Svitolina during their third-round match Friday at the U.S. Open.Gauff’s bid to repeat continues
Coco Gauff was not aware she had lost five consecutive matches against opponents in the top 50 of the WTA Tour rankings. She was not sure exactly how many points in a row she had dropped — 11, it turns out — to give away the first set against Elina Svitolina in their third-round match Friday.
Here, then, is what was entirely clear to Gauff at that moment: “I needed a reset.” So before the second set, the 20-year-old from Florida went to the bathroom, changed part of her outfit and splashed water on her face. Then Gauff went back on court and extended her bid to repeat as the women’s singles champ in New York by turning things around to beat the 27th-seeded Svitolina 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
“Felt like a new person coming out,” the third-seeded Gauff said. “I just didn’t want to leave the court with any regrets.”
After making mistake after mistake early on at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff managed to reel off nine of 11 games in one stretch and won again despite losing the opening set, something she did three times en route to claiming the 2023 trophy at Flushing Meadows, including in the final against Aryna Sabalenka, for her first Grand Slam title.
“It was in my mind today. It gave me a lot of confidence, just because it felt like déjà vu a little bit,” said Gauff, a semifinalist at the Australian Open and the French Open this year before exiting in the fourth round at Wimbledon.
On Sunday, Gauff will face No. 13 Emma Navarro, one of her teammates at the Paris Olympics, for a berth in the quarterfinals. Navarro eliminated at Wimbledon.
Navarro advanced Friday with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 victory over No. 19 Marta Kostyuk. Other women’s fourth-round matchups set up in the afternoon were No. 7 Zheng Qinwen versus No. 24 Donna Vekic, and No. 26 Paula Badosa versus Wang Yafan. No. 2 Sabalenka beat No. 29 Ekaterina Alexandrova 2-6, 6-1, 6-2 in the latest-starting women’s match in U.S. Open history and will face No. 33 Elise Mertens, who outlasted No. 14 Madison Keys in three sets.
Zheng-Vekic is a rematch of the gold medal match at the Summer Games four weeks ago; Zheng won that one.
Vekic beat Gauff in the third round at the Olympics, part of Gauff’s recent drought against top-50 foes. That also was part of a recent slump in which Gauff win just five of her previous nine matches.
Such a contrast to a year ago, when Gauff won 18 of 19, and 12 in a row, along the way to two tuneup titles on hard courts and then the championship at the U.S. Open that made her the first U.S. teenager to win it since Serena Williams in 1999.
By the conclusion of one set against Svitolina, it seemed as if another loss might be in the offing. Gauff’s totals were 16 unforced errors — nine on backhands — and just seven winners. She put only 45% of her first serves in. She went 0-for-3 on break points. She allowed Svitolina to take 19 of the 28 points that lasted more than four strokes.
All of those numbers got better across the last two sets as Gauff tried to be more aggressive with her forehands and be more careful with her backhands. And something else changed, at the behest of her coaches: Gauff got the partisan crowd more involved.
Svitolina said afterward she was bothered by an ankle injury picked up last week.
“I feel like she started to go (for) more a little bit. But to be fair, I didn’t play the way that I wanted to play. … Then she started to be more alive,” said Svitolina, a three-time major semifinalist. “And, of course, the crowd was behind her.”
Everything began to change for Gauff on Friday after 1 hour, 10 minutes, when she broke to lead 4-2 in the second set, smacking a cross-court forehand winner. She celebrated with a yell of “Come on!” and raised her left hand to wiggle her fingers and ask the spectators to get louder.
Soon that set belonged to Gauff, who closed it with a 94 mph ace, shook a fist and shouted.
Her only late wobble came when she served at 5-2. She wasted three match points and got broken there, but Gauff broke right back to close things out.
“I’m glad that I had that match,” Gauff said, “because I think it just makes me match tough and gets me ready, probably, for future challenges.”
The Sabalenka-Alexandrova match didn’t get underway until 12:07 a.m. It finished at 1:48 a.m., tied for the second-latest ending to a women’s match at the U.S. Open.
“I was happy that I was able to stay focused, no matter what, and I was able to turn around this match,” Sabalenka said.
The previous latest start to a women’s match at the U.S. Open was exactly at midnight on Sept. 2, 1987, with Gabriela Sabatini going on to beat Beverly Bowes 6-3, 6-3.
“Technically, I did my practice session today, so I’m good for tomorrow, right?” she joked. “Can I just tell my team that? It’s 2 a.m.; we count it like today.”
The match wasn’t the last to end. In men’s singles, No. 4 Alexander Zverev outlasted Tomas Martin Etcheverry 5-7, 7-5, 6-1, 6-3, finishing up at 2:35 a.m.