US Open 2026: Briefs
BRIEFS
US Open 2026
The dispatches written about this edition — short, sectioned and chart-led, each one built from the same data as the pages around it.
Djokovic goes out in the US Open first round
Mariano Navone, ranked 48th and 13–33 on hard courts for his career, beat Novak Djokovic 7-6(5) 5-7 4-6 6-2 6-1 on Arthur Ashe on Sunday night. It took four hours thirty-six, an inhaler, a medical timeout and, at 1-3 in the fifth, tears. It ended the longest run of first-round wins the Open era has recorded. We have all seen this film. Post-Jordan, post-Gretzky, post-Tiger: the great one goes, the sport announces that the void is unfillable, and then quietly discovers it was filled…
The US Open main draw opens tomorrow
The main draw opens tomorrow at Flushing Meadows. Two hundred and fifty-six singles players, a first round smeared across three days, finals on the 12th and 13th, and the world number one at home with a knee that will not cooperate. A few things that did not earn a section of their own. Forty-one of the entrants are American, more than twice any other country and roughly what you would expect from a tournament held in Queens. Fifteen more play under no flag at…
Every US Open Brief, across editions, is on the US Open Briefs page. The whole corpus lives at Briefs.