Novak Djokovic looked tired. He looked hurt. And at times Sunday night, he just looked old.
Djokovic overcame all that and improved to 19-0 in the first round of the US Open, battling through some leg troubles to beat Learner Tien 6-1, 7-6 (3), 6-2.
But the 38-year-old acknowledged concern after laboring through the middle of his first match since Wimbledon.
“I don’t know. I don’t have any injury or anything. I just struggled a lot to stay in long exchanges and recover after points,” Djokovic said.
Djokovic had his hands on his knees multiple times in the second set and received treatment for a blister on his right big toe after it. But after having his serve broken in the first game of the third set, he won the next five games to regain control.
It was the 24-time Grand Slam champion's first match since falling to Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon semifinals, when he struggled with an upper left leg injury, and one that made it tough to tell if he remains a real contender to win a fifth title in Flushing Meadows. He rolled through the first set in just 24 minutes, then looked weary in a second set that took nearly an hour longer.
“I started great. Just over 20 minutes, first set, I felt really good,” Djokovic said. “Then some long games to start the second set, and then I started to feel really — I don’t know why. I really was surprised how bad I was feeling in the second physically.”
The No. 7-seeded Djokovic has made a career of wearing down his opponents, but he looked like the one who was feeling it physically in the second set against an opponent from California who was half his age.
“To be quite honest with you, I wish I had Learner Tien's age but that’s not possible,” Djokovic said in his post-match interview.
His face reddened and he was huffing and puffing so much by the time the tiebreaker arrived that he received his second time violation of the match during it, costing him a first serve.
Tien won the point on Djokovic's second serve to tie it at 3-all, before Djokovic won the next four points.
He was then visited by the trainer at his seat. Djokovic had appeared to be bothered by his lower left leg late in the set, but it was his right foot that received treatment during the medical timeout.
Djokovic felt better in the third set, pulling away for his 75th consecutive first-round win at a Grand Slam tournament.
He hasn't won one of them since his win at the US Open in 2023. Djokovic opted to skip all the hard-court tournaments leading into this year's last major of the season, which perhaps contributed to him looking winded Sunday.
But Tien isn't ruling out a run for the Serbian.
“Obviously Sinner and (Carlos) Alcaraz, those guys are playing extremely well, but I don’t think I’d ever count him out,” Tien said. “I think he has the ability to play his best tennis and kind of peak when he needs it most, so I’m going to say that he’s got a shot.”
Perhaps Djokovic will be helped by an extra day of rest before his second-round match, thanks to playing on the first day of a tournament that now starts on Sunday, a day earlier.
“There are positives but also things that hopefully won’t happen in terms of, like, how I feel on the court physically the way I felt in the second set,” Djokovic said. “Hopefully that doesn’t happen, because then it makes my life on the court definitely much more challenging.”
