John Isner has called for fans to temper their expectations of Rafael Jodar following his shock first-round exit at the US Open.

The 19-year-old went into the final Grand Slam of the year as the 12th seed after a remarkable 2026 campaign. However, the Spaniard, who won this tournament as a junior two years ago, was thrashed 6-2, 6-1, 6-1 by lucky loser Bu Yunchaokete.

The teenager looked out of sorts against the Chinese underdog, who seemed unflustered by the rain delay, while Jodar repeatedly asked for his rackets to be restrung.

Jodar is still ninth in the ATP Tour Race and is on the cusp of the top 10, a far cry from when he started the year outside the world’s top 150. Now, former Wimbledon semi-finalist Isner has stressed that the 6ft 3in player is still so young and will learn from this setback.

He said on Nothing Major, “He’s 19. All this is so new to him. I think it’s crazy that… maybe we should pump our brakes a little bit. No one’s going to remember this match in a couple of years from now when he’s actually competing for slams, in my mind.

More US Open News

Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for tennis coverage you can trust.

“He’s good enough. He hasn’t been around that long. Probably he was just waiting and waiting and waiting to play his first round match. It took him forever to get going. He laid an egg, big time.”

Former world No 21 Steve Johnson felt that a result like this was coming due to the sheer amount of matches he has played this year. Prior to the US Open, Jodar had put together a 36-14 win-loss record and enjoyed deep runs in Washington and Canada this summer.

And while Jodar didn’t make any injury excuses or anything else like that, co-host Johnson outlined what went wrong for the youngster.

He said, “I was saying he’s going to run out of gas at some point. He’s going to have to play a bad match at some point. He never did in those events. It’s a very unfortunate time for him to play the worst match of the year at the US Open.

“He was bound to have one bad day, and he had it. It was unfortunate because it was at the US Open, somewhere he’s now the 12th seed, somebody that should be pushing for the second week and beyond. But he was dealing with a lot in this match. He changed rackets like five or six times in that first set alone.

“[He] couldn’t quite figure out the tension. Balls were flying out everywhere. The serve was all over the map and it’s just got to be a learning day for him. It’s a hard lesson to learn. But he had a bad day, and it finally happened. And it just happened to be at the Open.”

Tennis analyst and commentator Gill Gross actually predicted Jodar to win the US Open and beat Carlos Alcaraz in the final. That prediction caused quite a stir among tennis fans, with the American finding the funny side of his failed forecast.

He said on his YouTube channel, “This was pretty funny. Very hard to explain. As far as Jodar’s performance, he says that he wasn’t injured. He says that he wasn’t sick.

“It was a very short and feisty press conference from Rafa Jodar, but the point is there’s no obvious explanation for why he played as badly as he did. He was terrible, obviously.”

WHAT NEXT? Tommy Paul claims he knows exactly what to do to beat Carlos Alcaraz at the US Open