Novak Djokovic walked off a Cincinnati court on Saturday beaten by a man ranked 50th in the world, in ninety-degree heat that the twenty-four-time major champion later admitted he simply could not out-suffer anymore. Twenty-two years after his first tour title, the guy who used to treat five-set survival like a personality trait got outlasted by conditions, not just an opponent, and Damir Tirante will spend the rest of his career telling people about it. Djokovic is 39 in October. Cincinnati does not care about your résumé, only whether your legs still answer when it is 95 degrees and the guy across the net has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Here is the part that matters more than one upset: Djokovic no longer needs Cincinnati to eat. He is a part owner of the Miami Open, sits on the Professional Tennis Players Association board he co-founded to fight the tour for a bigger cut of media rights, and has spent three years positioning himself as management as much as talent. A first-round exit to a qualifier-level ranking barely dents the balance sheet of a man now negotiating tennis's economics rather than just competing inside them. The US Open starts August 24. That is the one where his body, not his boardroom seat, still has to answer the bell.