The news of world No. 1 tennis star Jannik Sinner’s improbable defeat at Roland Garros continues to send shock waves through the sports world, as the four-time Grand Slam champion was upended in the second round of the French Open.
Not only was he heavily favored to win the whole thing, he was up two sets to none and was winning a decisive third set 5-1 before choking the lead away in five sets, spoiling a 30-match win streak.
Sinner’s clay-court catastrophe will be remembered as one of the biggest tennis upsets of all time, but it got me thinking about some of the other shocking upsets in sports history.
Below are five of the most unbelievable “David vs. Goliath” moments in sports, where the unthinkable quickly became reality and reset the bar for what was possible from an underdog facing insurmountable odds.
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I’m sure many of you will take exception with this list, so feel free to leave a comment below letting me know which upsets I missed.
In January 2017, Novak Djokovic was the closest thing to a god in the tennis world.
The Serbian superstar was fresh off a two-year run in which he won five of a possible eight Grand Slam tournaments and had just captured the first French Open title in his career in 2016.
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Heading into the Australian Open, it was widely believed The Djoker would cruise to another tournament win on his surrogate home court, considering he had already won in Melbourne six times before.
In the second round, Djokovic squared off against 117th-ranked Denis Istomin, and much like Sinner, had a commanding two-set lead before blowing it in spectacular fashion.
By the time the dust had settled, Djokovic was packing his bags and heading home, marking the first time he exited the second round of a major championship in nearly a decade and the first time he had lost to a player ranked outside the top 100 in his illustrious career.
Djokovic’s 2017 was a tumultuous one, and his flameout at the Australian Open was the harbinger of a largely forgettable season.
The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors are a case study in how to have a historic year only to blow it the millisecond before crossing the finish line (though they aren’t the only ones to do so on this list).
After a record-breaking season in which the Warriors set the all-time regular season wins total at 73 and guard Stephen Curry was awarded the only unanimous MVP in league history, all that was left was vanquishing a LeBron-led Cleveland Cavaliers team.
With a double-digit win in Game 4, Golden State took the now infamous 3-1 lead and looked to put the series on ice at home in Game 5.
Then it happened.
Defensive stalwart Draymond Green was suspended for accumulating too many flagrants, meaning he would miss game five, a game in which the Cavs blew the doors off of the Warriors in a 15-point win.
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After another double-digit win in Game 6, it was obvious Cleveland had all the momentum in the world, and although Game 7 was one of the most tightly contested and memorable games in NBA Finals history, a Cavaliers series comeback felt inevitable.
No team had ever overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals, and the fact that the Warriors won 73 regular season games made this even more shocking.
It was equally impressive that the Cavs were able to mount the comeback as it was embarrassing that the Warriors blew what was a “golden” opportunity to etch their names into the history books.
Heading into the 2007 season, the Michigan Wolverines were heavy favorites to win the Big Ten and win a BCS National Championship.
The team was littered with veterans and NFL Draft hopefuls like Chad Henne, Jake Long and Mario Manningham, among others, and entered the year as a consensus top-five team coming off an 11-win season in which they narrowly missed playing for a national title.
They opened the season with FCS powerhouse Appalachian State, but no one was expecting much from the lowly Mountaineers as they traveled to the Big House to play the Maize and Blue.
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The game wasn’t even being broadcast on national television, but when App State took a 14-point lead in the waning moments of the first half, all eyes were suddenly trained on Ann Arbor.
The Wolverines mounted a furious comeback in the second half and even led late in the fourth quarter before the Mountaineers recaptured a two-point lead with under a minute left in the game.
Henne connected on a Hail Mary to Manningham to get Michigan in field goal range with just seconds remaining, but the game-winning attempt was blocked, sending horrified Wolverine fans to the exits and stunning the entire college football world.
No FCS/Division I-AA team had ever beaten a ranked FBS opponent before this, and the game didn’t even have betting odds.
Michigan never recovered and ended up firing head coach Lloyd Carr at season’s end, kicking off a decade of futility that only ended after hiring head coach Jim Harbaugh in 2015.
If you were around for the 2007 NFL season, you probably remember just how unstoppable the New England Patriots felt that year.
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Tom Brady and Randy Moss ran roughshod over the entire league, setting all sorts of passing records in the process and guiding the Pats to a perfect 16-0 regular season.
After a few closer-than-expected playoff games, the Patriots entered the Super Bowl as monstrous 12.5-point favorites against the upstart 10-6 wild-card New York Giants.
No one was giving the G-men an iota of a chance, but thanks to a brilliant game by New York’s front four, the Patriots were clinging to just a three-point lead late in the fourth quarter.
On a crucial third down, quarterback Eli Manning struggled out of a would-be sack and fired a prayer downfield to relative unknown David Tyree, who trapped the ball against his helmet and gifted the Giants a new set of downs.
A few plays later, Manning found Plaxico Burress in the back of the end zone, completing one of the most unthinkable upsets in NFL history.
Much like the Warriors, the Patriots sat on the precipice of glory, but tripped and fell off a cliff with the finish line in sight.
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Though Brady and the Pats would win three more Super Bowls together, this one still stings for all parties involved to this day.
Before the 2018 edition of the NCAA Tournament, no No. 1 seed had ever lost to a No. 16 seed.
Sure, there had been a few close calls, but to even suggest something so absurd would get you laughed out of any bracket-picking group or watch party.
That was before the Virginia Cavaliers had a March Madness to forget.
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Heading into the tournament, Tony Bennett had guided his Cavs to the No. 1 overall seed in the big dance, and for their efforts, they would be rewarded with the UMBC Retrievers, the automatic qualifiers from the American East Conference.
A game that wasn’t on anyone’s radar suddenly became appointment television when the Retrievers jumped all over Virginia, stifling them with suffocating defense.
What was a tie game at halftime became a 20-point blowout, and UMBC never relinquished the lead they took early in the second half.
The loss was so shocking that many people were calling for Bennett’s job, despite the fact that he had won the Henry Iba Award for Coach of the Year.
The only reason this game didn’t become the thing people associate Virginia with is that the Cavs literally won the whole thing the very next year.
Anything short of that would have been a PR disaster for the program, and despite this, it’s still the most shocking upset in NCAA Tournament history.