Update — Aug. 20, 2026: Djokovic has since drawn a distinction about what happened in Ohio. Speaking to reporters after the defeat, he said the conditions themselves were not the cause and pointed instead to a health issue he has dealt with for a number of years, one that troubles him in heat and humidity. He did not name the condition or elaborate on it, and no medical detail has been released by him or his team. He also said he felt physically better after Wimbledon than following any major in the previous two years. This post has been corrected: an earlier version characterized Djokovic as attributing the defeat to heat and humidity, and quoted his answer on returning to Cincinnati imprecisely.
Update — Aug. 19, 2026: The man who beat Djokovic here is now in the quarterfinals. Tirante beat 14th seed Jakub Mensik 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 in the fourth round, becoming only the second active Argentine to reach a Masters 1000 quarterfinal after Francisco Cerundolo. He plays Arthur Fils, who beat world No. 8 Alex de Minaur 6-3, 6-4 on the same day that Tommy Paul knocked out top seed Alexander Zverev, emptying the top half of the draw of its leading seeds.
Novak Djokovic was beaten 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 by Thiago Agustin Tirante in the second round of the Cincinnati Open on Saturday, a defeat shaped less by the Argentine’s tennis than by the Ohio heat that left the 24-time Grand Slam champion sick on court and, at one stage, on his hands and knees.
Djokovic, the No. 3 seed and world No. 5, took the opening set in 44 minutes and looked untroubled. The match turned in the third game of the second set, an 18-minute hold in which he saved four break points across nine deuces. He won the game and appeared to have nothing left in reserve. Between points he doubled over, and during the changeover that followed he appeared to be sick into his towel before calling for a medical timeout.
A physiotherapist attended first, then a tournament doctor, packing ice towels around him as he sat courtside. Djokovic resumed after roughly three minutes, but the sharpness was gone. Tirante broke for a 4-3 lead when Djokovic double-faulted into the net, then closed out the set with an ace after a run of comfortable holds. Both players left the court to change before the decider.
Djokovic recovered enough to trade holds deep into the third set, denying 13 of the 15 break points Tirante created across the match. But at 4-4 the drop shot he has leaned on all his career to shorten rallies deserted him. Two netted attempts handed over the break, and Tirante served it out, sealing the biggest win of his career when Djokovic dumped another drop shot into the tape on match point. The contest lasted more than two and a half hours.
Asked afterward whether he had played his last match in Cincinnati, where he has won three titles, the most recent in 2023, Djokovic left it open. “I certainly hope so, but it looks more likely not,” he said.
That answer carries beyond one tournament. Djokovic had not competed since losing to Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon semifinals in July, and Cincinnati was the only match play on his schedule before the US Open begins Aug. 30. The problems that surfaced Saturday are precisely the ones New York can reproduce: late-August conditions in Flushing Meadows are routinely as punishing as Ohio’s, and Djokovic will now arrive having played one competitive match in roughly five weeks.
The defeat also fits the shape of his 2026. He reached the Australian Open final in January, losing to Carlos Alcaraz, and made the last four at Wimbledon. Outside the majors, though, the season has been threadbare: a first-ever opening-round loss in Rome to Dino Prizmic, a third-round exit to Joao Fonseca at Roland Garros, and withdrawals from Miami, Monte Carlo, Madrid and Montreal. A record-extending 25th major remains the organizing goal of whatever is left of his career, and the events meant to prepare him for it have increasingly become events he cannot finish.
For Tirante, 25, the win extends a breakthrough summer. He reached the top 50 for the first time last week on the back of a Montreal run that included a victory over Taylor Fritz, and he had arrived in the second round in Cincinnati only after needing three tiebreaks to get past Britain’s Jan Choinski. He next faces Spain’s Martin Landaluce, who beat Matteo Arnaldi 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.
The result reshapes a draw that had already lost much of its top. Sinner withdrew with a knee injury and Alcaraz with a wrist problem, which means the last three men’s champions in Cincinnati are all out of the tournament before its second week. Top seed Alexander Zverev and second seed Felix Auger-Aliassime now head a field with no obvious favorite, and the US Open seeding picture that runs through this event has been thrown open with it.
What Djokovic does over the next fortnight is the more pressing question. There is no remaining hard-court event that would hand him meaningful match play without eating into recovery time, and nothing he said in Ohio suggested he intends to look for one. On the evidence of Saturday, the issue is not rust. It is whether the body holds up over best-of-five sets in New York.
