Kecmanovic and Medjedovic Out of US Open

Miomir Kecmanovic had the match in his hands in the third set. He’d forced a break, taken the lead, and up in the stands people were already counting on a deciding fifth. Then Denis Shapovalov answered with an immediate re-break, and from that moment everything swung the Canadian’s way. Shapovalov needed just under two and a half hours to beat Kecmanovic 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 in the first round of the US Open, sending him home from the first major of the fall.

Kecmanovic looked sharp only in the second set, when he leveled at 1-1 and held his break as if he were finally about to impose his own rhythm. Shapovalov, who had been flying around the court since the opening game, answered with a run of shots Kecmanovic had no reply to. By the end of the match the Canadian had racked up 18 aces, and he closed out the last set with barely any resistance, 6-1.

A few hours earlier, Hamad Medjedovic went through a similar script. Against Poland’s Kamil Majchrzak he couldn’t take a single set, losing comfortably 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, without the drama Kecmanovic at least briefly produced. There was no turning point like the one against Kecmanovic, no break to restore hope: Majchrzak pushed the match forward game by game at the same pace and closed it out without ever being threatened in a third set.

Sources disagreed on exactly who beat whom. Kurir ran a headline saying it was Majchrzak who eliminated Kecmanovic, while Danas, B92 and Telegraf reported that Shapovalov beat Kecmanovic and Majchrzak beat Medjedovic. The scores carried by B92 and Telegraf match each other, and that is the version used in this article.

The day rounded off a grim run for Serbian tennis at this Grand Slam. Earlier the same day, Novak Djokovic was eliminated too, losing in five sets to Argentina’s Mariano Navone 7-6, 5-7, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, his first opening-round loss at a Grand Slam since the 2006 Australian Open. Add that to the exits of Kecmanovic and Medjedovic, and the picture is clear: for the first time, Serbia is left without a single men’s singles player past the first round of one of the four majors. The only Serbian still in the draw is Aleksandra Krunic, and only in doubles.

The exodus had started before the draw was even played. Five Serbian players had already lost in qualifying, so of the whole squad that traveled to New York, essentially only the doubles pair remained. Combined with what happened to Djokovic, Kecmanovic and Medjedovic in the main draw, it means that of the eight players who carried the Serbian flag in New York, not one singles name made it to the second round.

For Kecmanovic, a race against the calendar follows now. The season is nearing its end, and he needs a new chance to climb back into the world’s top 50, since his current ranking won’t get him there after an exit like this. Whether we’ll see him in Nis in about three weeks, when Serbia faces Lithuania in the Davis Cup, remains an open question. Shapovalov, meanwhile, keeps rolling: in the second round he faces Luca Van Assche, who beat Cameron Norrie on his way there.

Serbia has never had an opening day like this in men’s singles at any Grand Slam, not even with Novak Djokovic in his prime, nor with the generation that followed him. The question now isn’t whether this will happen again, but how quickly Kecmanovic and Medjedovic can put New York behind them, starting with the Davis Cup in Nis.