Novak Djokovic made sure his first-round US Open win never escaped his grasp

NEW YORK—“Night sessions at US Open are very famous, most famous in our sport,” Novak Djokovic said this past weekend. “I’m going to play my first match here Monday night, so I can’t wait to be under the lights. The noise, the energy of the stadium is just different from anything else.”

Djokovic, it turned out, had to wait longer than he hoped to hear that noise and feel that energy. For the first two-and-a-half sets of his 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 win over Radu Albot, the night-session crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium was about as quiet as 20,000 or so people can get. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, but not much else as Djokovic grabbed early leads in the first two sets and never gave Albot, or the fans, any reason to hope for something better.

Djokovic is 37 and Albot 34, but they had never met before tonight. The Moldovan didn’t look tight or overwhelmed, but he never found a rhythm or seemed comfortable, either. Down break point at 2-2 in the first set, he took a routine forehand and dropped it tamely into the net for no apparent reason. That set the tone for the night’s rallies. Albot wasn’t going for a ton, yet he was still missing. He finished with 45 unforced errors and just 15 winners.

The one place where Albot did have success was on break points. He saved 10 of 16, and made Djokovic much more annoyed than the scores of this match would indicate he should have been. That was especially true in the third set, when Albot clung to his serve long enough to get to 3-3. When Djokovic finally broke with a stab backhand volley winner to make to make it 4-3, he revved what was left of the crowd into the first and only collective outburst of the evening.

As innocuous as this match felt, it was still important for Djokovic to finish it as quickly as possible. In 2021, he dropped a set in four of his first five matches. By the time he made the final, he had nothing left for Daniil Medvedev.

Something similar could have happened in the third set against Albot, but Djokovic made sure the match never escaped his grasp. He finished it up right around midnight, which, for the US Open, is an efficient night’s work.