The first round of the 2026 US Open produced two major upsets. Unseeded Stefanos Tsitsipas, ranked No. 53, beat No. 10 seed Arthur Fils 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-1, 6-4 on Aug. 31, 2026 — a player who had beaten him in all five of their previous meetings. The day before, on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, No. 4 seed Novak Djokovic lost a five-set marathon to Mariano Navone, 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, in a match that lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes.
Key facts
- Stefanos Tsitsipas (No. 53) beat No. 10 seed Arthur Fils 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-1, 6-4 on Aug. 31, 2026 — his first win over Fils in six meetings.
- Novak Djokovic (No. 4 seed) lost to Mariano Navone 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1 on Aug. 30, 2026, in 4 hours and 36 minutes — his longest-ever Grand Slam first-round match.
- The loss was Djokovic’s first Grand Slam first-round exit since the 2006 Australian Open.
- Other seeded losses: No. 29 Cameron Norrie to Luca Van Assche; No. 27 Barbora Krejcikova to Kamilla Rakhimova, 7-6(4), 6-2.
- Carlos Alcaraz beat Roman Safiullin 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in his first match in about 139 days after a wrist injury; Aryna Sabalenka beat Camila Osorio 6-2, 6-4.
Tsitsipas ends a five-match losing streak
Fils arrived at the US Open after winning the Cincinnati Masters title roughly a week earlier. He had also beaten Tsitsipas in all five of their prior meetings, most recently 6-0, 6-1 at the Miami Masters in March 2026. Tsitsipas’s win was a significant upset.
Instead, Tsitsipas dropped the first set 4-6, then won a tight second-set tiebreak 7-3 before pulling away, taking the third set 6-1 and closing out the match 6-4 in the fourth. He finished with 50 winners to Fils’s 38, according to one match-stats tracker. It was Tsitsipas’s first win over Fils in six career meetings.
Djokovic’s longest-ever Grand Slam first-round match
Djokovic, the No. 4 seed, needed four hours and 36 minutes to lose to Navone — the longest first-round match of his Grand Slam career. Navone won it 7-6(5), 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1. The loss ended an Open-Era record streak: it was Djokovic’s first Grand Slam first-round loss since the 2006 Australian Open.
The loss is separate from another early setback for Djokovic at this US Open: he and Aryna Sabalenka, the tournament’s top-seeded mixed doubles pair, lost their opening mixed doubles match to Henry Patten and Katerina Siniakova — splitting the first two four-game sets 1-4, 4-2 before losing the deciding match tiebreak 10-2, the US Open mixed-doubles fast4/match-tiebreak format — in the days before the main singles draw began.
Other seeded players fell too
Fils and Djokovic weren’t the only seeds to go out early. In the men’s draw, No. 29 seed Cameron Norrie lost his first-round match to Luca Van Assche. In the women’s draw, No. 27 seed Barbora Krejcikova was beaten by Kamilla Rakhimova, 7-6(4), 6-2. Also in the men’s draw, Flavio Cobolli came back from two sets down to beat Francisco Comesana 3-6, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Alexander Zverev defeated Lorenzo Sonego 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-4 in a five-set first-round match.
The favorites who held serve
Not every seed had a rough day. Carlos Alcaraz, playing his first competitive singles match in about 139 days after a wrist injury sidelined him since April, beat Roman Safiullin 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in straight sets, and defending women’s champion Aryna Sabalenka opened her title defense with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Camila Osorio. Iga Swiatek also advanced through her first-round match.
Sources and further reading
- Sabalenka starts US Open title defense with straight-sets win over Osorio
- Mariano Navone stuns physically ailing Novak Djokovic at US Open
- Arthur Fils following first-round defeat in New York
- Late break propels Swiatek to straight-sets win in US Open first round
- Aryna Sabalenka vs. Camila Osorio at the 2026 US Open
- US Open 2026: Results & latest updates
- Stefanos Tsitsipas strikes 50 winners to halt in-form Arthur Fils