Novak Djokovic tried to put on a happy face, if only briefly, after his startling third-round defeat at the U.S. Open. He raised his arms, put two thumbs up and grinned a bit before making his way toward the Arthur Ashe Stadium locker room.

That 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 loss to Alexei Popyrin, which ended shortly before midnight as Friday became Saturday, closed the Grand Slam season for Djokovic, marking the first year since 2017 that he didn’t win at least one major championship.

What does Novak Djokovic’s latest Grand Slam loss mean?

For a guy with 24 such titles, more than any other man in tennis history, maybe that’s not such a big deal.

Then again, for someone who makes plain that his ambitions lie with accumulating as many of those trophies as possible — and for someone who is 37, don’t forget — maybe it is.

“It’s hard to see the big perspective right now. You’re just angry and upset that you lost and the way you played, and that’s it,” said Djokovic, who was the defending champion, never has exited the U.S. Open earlier than the third round and last went out this early in 2006.

“But tomorrow is a new day,” he continued, “and I will obviously think about what to do next.”

Does this mark the end of the Big Three era?

Looking at the larger picture, there is this statistic of significance: 2024 will go in the books as the first season since 2002 without a Slam title for any member of the so-called Big Three of men’s tennis — Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.