NEW YORK — There’s something lovely about a progression, and that’s Emma Navarro’s tennis game at the U.S. Open: light footwork; clean, elongated strokes; and, most important, a calm harmony as she advances measure by measure on the world. Her formally trained passage into champion-level maturity is a bit of a lost art in this sport, in which such great accelerations are expected that you’re treated as a has-been for going to college.
Column by Sally Jenkins
Navarro, a 23-year-old American and product of two years at the University of Virginia, reached the Open semifinals not with an unexpected blast, but with a show of craft you might call well-schooled, which expressed itself in a handsy, string-singing little drop shot on the final point to defeat Paula Badosa in the quarterfinals, 6-2, 7-5.
This season has been a startling breakthrough for a somewhat diminutive, soft-voiced player who likes to be “quiet in my head,” and who has an aversion to heat-seeking lights. “I thought being on the radar would be more of a scary thing than it actually is,” she said earlier this week. “Now that I think I’m here, it’s not so bad.”
It’s not right to call what Navarro has done in this tournament an upset, because she has won more matches this season than anyone except top-ranked Iga Swiatek, a fact that will vault her into the top 10 after the Open. But it’s also true that the No. 13 seed has not been on anyone’s watch list to hoist a Grand Slam trophy, except perhaps for some of her locker room friends, who have noticed her late-surging development, along with what they say is a sidelong wit. “Don’t let her fool you,” says Jessica Pegula, who predicts that Navarro will be a contender for years to come.
It’s hard to call the daughter of a billionaire a hard scrabbler — Navarro’s father is entrepreneur Ben Navarro, a banker who owns the WTA event in their hometown of Charleston, S.C., and you can see the moneyed lessons in her forehand. But when she left the Virginia campus in 2021, she did so for low-tier challenger stops such as Liepaja, Latvia, and Tyler, Tex. She didn’t want to be a flash — she wanted to earn her place. “I just really took things one thing at a time and wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere,” she said during the first week of this tournament. “That’s what I knew would give me the most confidence. If I was able to get to this point, I would feel like I’ve put in the work to get here, and I’ve kind of gone through that rite of passage. That was really necessary for me to feel like I have earned my way here and that I belong here.”
She made a pact with her longtime childhood coach Peter Ayers, who had worked with her since she was 11: they would give it two seasons, and if she didn’t prove herself, they would rethink. They never had to have the conversation.
Cracking the top 100 was the goal. In her first year, she climbed from No. 463 to No. 143, and then vaulted to No. 38 by the end of last season. “I hit the two-year mark this June, and we didn’t even acknowledge it or talk about it,” she said, laughing.
Each step of the way, she acquired a new shot in her repertoire and learned how to cope with the pressure points in the match. “In the past, I’ve seen choices on court, like taking the ball on the rise or moving forward to hit a forehand as opposed to moving back, stuff like that,” she said this week. “Those have been choices in the past. Now I see those types of situations as less of a choice and more of, like, I have to take this on in this way. Partially because the players I’m playing against, you know, they’ll shut it down if I don’t make that more confident, aggressive choice.”
At the start of this season, her friend Pegula couldn’t help noticing that new firmness in Navarro’s game. “I was, like, ‘Wow, she’s actually going to be like a serious threat,'” Pegula said. It was the harbinger for a 2024 campaign in which Navarro has won 49 matches, and her steep learning curve has been fascinating to watch. At the Australian Open, Navarro lost in the third round but said cheerfully, “Sometimes I’ll just hit a shot on the court where I’m, like, ‘Dang, I didn’t have that shot two years ago.’ It’s pretty cool that I can pull that shot off now.” By the French Open, she was confident enough to reach the round of 16, where she lost in straight sets to Aryna Sabalenka, who gave her a lesson. “Maybe I didn’t know this until today, I had to learn this today, but the best players in the world on a stage like that in a tournament like this, they are not messing around,” Navarro said grimly after that one.
At Wimbledon she was still shedding the last bit of competitive uncertainty. “I’m not sure where I stand,” she said. But after she reached the quarters there by defeating Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff on the hallowed courts of the All England Club, she said, “I know this isn’t the last time I’m going to be in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam. I know I’ll be back.”
Then came New York, where she had never won a U.S. Open match. The first time Navarro ever stepped on to the Arthur Ashe Stadium court, she was a kid playing at the junior level, and the place made her head spin. “I remember it just felt so big,” she remembered. “I was so dizzy. Just like out of sorts.”
But this time she came to the grounds as a mature contender, and when she walked through a tunnel and saw an open door to the court, she stepped through it. “You know, it was probably half the size as I remembered it being. I think it’s sort of a testament to how far I’ve come in this sport.”
Now, she will get another shot at Sabalenka in the semifinals Thursday. Whatever else Navarro accomplishes at this Open, she has already done something important: reestablished the importance and usefulness of education in tennis. Not the book-learning kind, particularly, but the kind that allows for slower paced self-exploration, and curiosity about one’s own powers free from terrible pressure. “It was really important for me to take a more methodical approach and kind of go through all the steps to get to where I am now and not feel like I’m anywhere where I’m not ready to be yet,” she has said. And here’s the best thing about it: Navarro is still improving, almost by the day.
“She’s a great athlete. She’s mentally stable, and she’s only going to get better,” Pegula says. “I feel like she’s going to be a threat for the next 10 years or however long she plays, to definitely be a slam contender.”
