No. 1 seed Simona Halep just suffered a shocking first-round upset at the U.S. Open

We're only a few hours into the U.S. Open — and already the tournament's top seed is toast.

Opening day of a Grand Slam tennis tournament tends to feel predictable: Top players play unseeded players, beat them off the court, and move on. But Monday's first round match in New York between No. 1 Simona Halep and Kaia Kanepi presented a different storyline. Halep fell in straight sets to the unseeded Estonian — 6-2, 6-4 — marking the first time in modern history that the No. 1 women's seed has lost a first round match at the U.S. Open, reports USA Today. (Historic as Monday's loss may be, it wasn't all that novel for Halep, who also lost in the first round of the U.S. Open last year.)

Halep was clearly not happy with her performance Monday.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Kanepi will face Swiss player Jil Teichmann in the next round. Last year the 33-year-old Kanepi made it to the quarterfinals as a qualifier, but she has yet to make it beyond that point in a tennis major. But with two weeks left to go in the tournament, there's plenty of time to change that. See the highlights of Monday's match here.