Emma Navarro is officially done playing tennis under the radar.
Navarro, ranked No 23 in the world, scored the biggest win of her career on Wednesday, beating the two-time Grand Slam champion Aryna Sabalenka in three sets, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, the so-called fifth slam.
There are far more famous American tennis players, such as Coco Gauff. There is even a far more famous “Emma” in the sport. That would be Emma Raducanu, of Great Britain, who came out of nowhere to win the 2021 U.S. Open. That Emma, though, is working her way back from wrist and ankle surgery and is ranked 250th in the world.
The 22-year-old Navarro, on the other hand, has been shooting up the rankings for the better part of three years on the strength of a game that gets more solid with each passing week. Navarro, an NCAA champion at the University of Virginia, started the year winning her first WTA tournament in Hobart, Australia, and then made the third round of the Australian Open.
At Indian Wells, she played one of the top matches of the tournament, outlasting Elina Svitolina on Monday night in a tight third set, that few witnessed because it followed Novak Djokovic’s surprising loss to Luca Nardi.
On Wednesday, she took advantage of a shaky Sabalenka, who struggled to find consistency on her serve all afternoon and rode the wave of support from the home-country crowd across the finish line to beat the world No 2 and reach the quarterfinals of a WTA 1000 event for the first time.
Navarro has now won 18 matches on the women’s tour in 2024 — the most of any player. She said she always walks onto the court feeling like she has a chance to win, but going up against the winner of the most recent Grand Slam on her favorite surface is a pretty big ask. Then she held her serve in the first game, played the second game close, and held her serve once more.
Suddenly she heard that inner voice telling her she was in the match and that she really could win it.
“It was nice that it only took maybe two or three games to feel like that,” she said.
A year ago, Navarro was outside the top 100. Her father, Ben, who owns the tennis tournaments in Charleston and Cincinnati, was probably better known in the sport than she was.
In a sport dominated by women who are six feet tall or close to it, she is just 5ft 7in (170cm). She is subdued on the court to the point where she is still getting used to even the most basic on-court celebrations. She guessed that her fist pump at the end of the upset win might have been among the first two or three of her career.
But what Navarro might lack in stature, she makes up for with athleticism and competitiveness.
“I love to get scrappy, as my coach says,” Navarro said. “It’s one of the things that I love the most about the game. Just kind of that cat-and-mouse aspect of playing. I’ve put a ton of effort into fitness and just making sure that I’m strong enough and I’m fit enough and I’m able to go the distance. I think having that gives me a lot of confidence knowing that I can stay out on the court for as long as it takes. You know, I’m not going to lose because I got tired or I wasn’t fit enough.”
As for the athleticism, that may come from her grandfather, Frank Navarro, who played college football and then coached at Williams, Columbia, Wabash and Princeton.
As the match got tight and headed to a third set on a warm and windy Wednesday afternoon in the desert, Navarro told herself she had to serve bigger and better — and she did.
She told herself she needed to lock in and play aggressively. She did that too. Eight games later, she was into the quarterfinals.
“Just really excited to survive another day and get to come out and play another match tomorrow,” she said. “This is why I play. Yeah, I’m excited.”
(Robert Prange/Getty Images)
Daniel Miller is a sports fanatic who lives and breathes athletics. His coverage spans from major league championships to local sports events, delivering up-to-the-minute updates and in-depth analysis for sports enthusiasts.
