Is this tennis’s new superstar? Meet Emma Navarro, the American player taking Wimbledon by storm… check out more of her story below

She is tennis’s next big thing – from a seriously wealthy background, with a bulletproof mindset and a game to match. As Emma Navarro gears up for Wimbledon, she talks perfectionism, good fortune and playing for something bigger than herself.

It’s been a rare day off for Emma Navarro and the tennis champion has spent it scudding up and down the King’s Road on a Lime Bike, like any other young American tourist. Tomorrow, she’ll be at the Ritz, transformed into an ultra glamorous vision in a bedazzled gown for Tatler, with a racket slung over one shoulder. But for now she sits, unrecognised, in the marble-floored foyer of the Chelsea Harbour Hotel, looking younger than her 24 years, in sweatpants, her hair slicked back into a ponytail.

One wonders how much longer the tennis player, who hails from Charleston, South Carolina, will be able to perch in a London hotel lobby unnoticed. Navarro is widely believed to be on the cusp of tennis super-stardom, one of a cohort of young women – alongside Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, whom she considers friends – representing a resurgence in American tennis. She has enjoyed a meteoric rise. Going from the world’s 121st-best women’s tennis player to climbing into the top-ten within a year and change. She reached the semifinals of last year’s US Open, the quarterfinals at 2024 Wimbledon and Indian Wells and was named the most improved player of the year by the WTA. She is now ranked tenth best female player in the world and as Wimbledon begins, all eyes will be on her.

Navarro has a tantalising backstory to match her rising star. She’s the daughter of the billionaire, tennis obsessive Ben Navarro, who made his fortune in finance, and owns two tennis tournaments: the Charleston Open and the Western & Southern Open (also known as the Cincinnati Open). Her grandfather is Frank Navarro, a famous American football player and coach; athleticism is in her bones.

From such a lineage, you might expect a sportsperson cocky and noisily sure of themselves, but Navarro emits a quiet confidence in her own abilities. Quick and sure-footed, she covers the court like a blanket. Perhaps most importantly, she has the mental toughness essential to succeed. She is also something of a perfectionist, with a healthy dose of American individualism.

‘What I love about tennis,’ she tells me, in that lilting Southern accent, ‘is that it’s totally in my control… I like that your bad days on the court are totally your fault and with your good days, it’s [like]: congratulations to you… I am responsible for everything that goes on on my side of the court. I’m not out there with team mates or other people. I like bearing that responsibility.’

It’s that mental strength she considers her greatest asset. She says, ‘I was raised to be really tough and resilient and never back down and keep on fighting to the very last point. I feel that’s something I can hang my hat on a little bit, even on days when I’m not playing the best, I can be really mentally tough and that’s what makes this journey sustainable. There are a lot of ups and downs and if you’re not mentally tough it’s easy to bow out.’ Throughout the interview, Navarro subtly angles her body away from me, at one point firmly sticking a hand in her pocket. It strikes me as a protective posture, the tennis star unsure of the media and the dictaphone sitting on the table in front of her.

One soaring high was reaching the semifinals at last year’s US Open in the Arthur Ashe stadium. She played against Aryna Sabalenka in a particularly moving match for Navarro, who was born in New York city.

‘It’s the biggest tennis stadium in the world. You’re in a bowl and it feels like you’re in an abyss… just to hear the crowd roar, to feel the New York city energy [the city she was born in]. It is unmatched.’

She doesn’t have to deliberate long to pinpoint what has been, as a counterpoint, her lowest low.

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Losing at the Olympics was really tough. There are just some emotions at the Olympics that you can’t quite describe. You are sleeping in cardboard beds at the Olympic village and you’re not sleeping much. You’re playing with your country’s flag on your chest and the USA on your back. There’s this energy and pride that you play with… you feel like you are playing for something bigger than yourself.’

She lost in the third round. ‘I had match points in the second set and wasn’t able to close it out. That was a really tough match to lose. It definitely took me a while to get over that one.’

A little of that tension spilled out when Navarro had some choice words for her opponent, Qinwen Zheng, who beat her in the third round. ‘I just told her I didn’t respect her as a competitor,’ Navarro revealed at a press conference later. ‘I think she goes about things in a pretty cut-throat way. It makes for a locker room that doesn’t have a lot of camaraderie, so it’s tough to face an opponent like that, who I really don’t respect.’ Qinwen’s response to Navarro? ‘It looks like she’s not happy with my behaviour towards her. If she’s not happy about my behaviour, she can come and tell me. I would like to correct [it] to become a better player and a better person.’

Perhaps tennis counts for so much in Navarro’s life because she came to it so young, as a toddler ball girl in a family in love with the sport. It was her father who introduced her to tennis.

‘I started when I was three years old, old enough to hold a racket,’ she recalls. ‘Growing up, tennis was just a huge part of our lives. When I was too young to hold a racket, I’d be out on the court, picking up balls for my brothers. Then when I was old enough to play, my dad would toss me balls. I’d be right up close to the net, just big enough to hit the ball over.’

Soon she and her father teamed up to play against her brothers in doubles – and from the off, the games were ‘super competitive’

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Although Navarro’s life is very much all about tennis, she said her heart was ‘open’ and she wouldn’t rule out a romance with a fellow tennis player: ‘It happens a lot. There are a few tennis couples on tour.’

While tennis was a favourite pastime of the whole family – except for her mother Kelly, who is ‘the rock of the family, she would never talk about tennis, she never played, so she was the parent who could be the non-tennis parent’ – Emma is the only sibling so far to dedicate her life and career to hitting a ball over a net.

‘I just developed an obsession with trying to be really good at it. It was something that I could pour my energy and focus into. I think I was a bit rambunctious as a kid and it was something I could get hyper-focussed on which was really good for me as a kid. I learnt an incredible amount of life lessons from it.’

Some of those life lessons included simply surviving in the brutally competitive and pressurised junior circuit.

‘Junior tennis was brutal. You had kids cheating. We’re out there and they have 12-year-olds calling their own lines, keeping their own score and even at that age, there’s immense amounts of pressure. Kids are going to cheat because they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. It’s tough. It’s brutal. You have to learn how to deal with a lot of adversity, how to deal with someone on the other side of the net who’s trying to take something from you and who’s maybe not treating you in the best kind of way.’

By the age of nine, Navarro was practising before and after school, waking at five to train and fitting in a three-hour session when classes finished. By the age of 11, it became a full schedule – which came with a price: sacrificing play dates and birthday parties to hone her game. ‘Even at that age, there was a part of me that felt like I was missing out a little bit, but I felt like it was worth it too.’ She is thankful she grew up with a group of friends who didn’t play tennis and now fly out to see her play on tour.

Her father’s work ethic inspired her. ‘He never did anything with less than 100 per cent effort… That invincibility was cool to see and I learnt it was something you could create.’

She enrolled at the University of Virginia but two years later made the momentous decision to quit and start climbing the ranks of professional tennis. ‘I felt that it was now or never. I’d dedicated so much of my life to this sport and I kind of wanted to see what I could do with it.’

The first few months were lonely. The competition was tough. She began to doubt her decision. But within six months she’d racked up some successes and Wimbledon 2024 proved to be a pivotal tournament. She garnered attention after defeating former world number one Naomi Osaka at Centre Court in the second round. Soon after, she beat US Open champ (and her Olympic roommate) Coco Gauff. With success has come increased public scrutiny.

She went from world’s 121st-best women’s tennis player to a spot within the top-ten within a year and change Graham Denholm/Getty Images
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‘You go from having no eyes on you to feeling like the whole world is watching your every move… it’s definitely something I’ve had to get used to. Especially when I’m home. So many people recognise me when I’m out.’

Is the tennis circuit friendly? Navarro equivocates: ‘Yes and no. I’ve built good relationships, especially with other American players, just practising together and playing other tournaments like the Olympics and the Billie Jean King Cup. Jess [Pegula] and I have become good friends over the past year or so. But they’re also your competitors. It’s a little bit unique in that sense. You’re friends but you also have to play against each other.’

Pegula and Navarro have more in common than both claiming spots in the WTA’s top ten. They are the daughters of billionaires. Pegula’s father is oil baron and sports tycoon Terry Pegula, whose £5 billion estimated net worth makes him the 365th richest person in the world.

One of her favourite things to do when she has rare time-off is kayaking in Charleston with her dog Instagram @emma_navarro48
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I ask Navarro if she was known on the circuit as the billionaire’s daughter and it’s the only time I see her bristle. She clearly doesn’t like the B word.

‘I don’t read anything. I don’t read the comments, the articles, any of that stuff. I don’t know what the fans are saying. There will be headlines and they kind of mention that [her father’s billionaire status] which is fine, but I didn’t grow up being handed things.

‘We grew up in a sort of traditional way. We’d get up at 6am on a Saturday morning and go play tennis… growing up it was a priority that we learnt toughness and we learnt work ethic and how to be intentional and purposeful and live productive lives so I don’t love being referred to as whoever with however much money’s daughter. It’s a label I don’t really like.’

Her greatest asset is her mental resilience, Navarro said: ‘You keep on fighting to the very last point’ Clive

It’s a label she’ll have to live with – particularly as she ascends the tennis ranking and press attention inevitably increases. It’s even, perhaps, a vulnerability for opponents to prey on.

For now her life is pure tennis. Except for the off season which spans the end of November and December, she is on tour the entire year. But she tries not to live in ‘a road bubble’, as she calls it, exploring the cities she travels to – hence her Lime Bike adventure on the King’s Road – and ensuring she stays in touch with her friends back home. She tells me she is single, but not opposed to romance.

Reaching the semifinals at last year’s US Open, in New York, the city she was born in, was a career highlight Clive

‘Tennis is it, for now. We’ll see. My heart’s open, let’s put it that way.’ Would she date a fellow tennis player? Today’s papers are full of rumours about a growing bond between Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz, who famously let off steam in Ibiza following his French Open win. ‘I don’t know – I wouldn’t write it off. It happens a lot. There are a few tennis couples on tour.’

She’s not opposed to glamour either. She didn’t watch much tennis growing up – too busy playing it – but the player she most admired was Russian glamazon Maria Sharapova. ‘I liked her fashion and I felt like she was very feminine and brought a new energy to the tour.’ Unsurprisingly, Navarro with her all-American appeal is similarly attractive to brands and she is speaking to me as part of her duties as the brand ambassador for Mejuri. Their bracelets adorn her wrists and she has two necklaces glistening at the collar of her sweatshirt.

The partnership was a natural fit considering her love of jewellery. ‘What I love about Mejuri is that I’m wearing athletic clothes a lot of the time and you sometimes feel not put together in athletic clothes, so I love that I can wear my jewellery all the time and feel a little bit feminine.’

She takes a more is more approach: stacking her bracelets, her rings and necklaces.

‘It’s everyday wear. I sleep in this stuff, I wear it all the time. It’s super universal… my favourite piece is probably my tennis bracelet. It sparkles a little, it fits because I play tennis and I have this bedazzled ‘E’ bracelet too – they are an easy wear and I love them,’ she smiles, stretches, looks at the bracelets catching the light on her wrist. A little touch of glitter that she’ll bring to SW19 this week. Watch out for her. Emma Navarro won’t be able to ride a Lime Bike unnoticed for much longer.