Reporter’s notebook: following Emma Navarro’s 10-year journey

As a long-time sportswriter for the Charleston, S.C.’s The Post and Courier, I covered Emma Navarro since she was a teenager. I knew back in her years as a junior that Emma was a special tennis player. She was determined to be great.

Emma was always big on practice. She practices hard and then she plays hard. That was apparent in her years as a junior.

When Emma was just breaking into the junior ranks, she started working on her dream of playing professional tennis. Even then, it was easy to see that she applied the same type of perfection and concentration to her matches and practices that have propelled her to the 2024 US Open semifinals.

Starting in fourth grade, she became serious about playing tennis. After all, her dad, Ben Navarro, bought a tennis complex just for his kids. (Her sister, Meggie, plays for the University of Virginia.) Training at the Live To Play Tennis, or LTP Tennis, in Mount Pleasant, S.C., appeared to make her even better than she might have been if she called another tennis court “home,” and she was just one of many juniors practicing at various facilities in the Charleston area.

She already had won several national junior titles, but the big jump came in 2018. Ben negotiated a deal with the USTA to hold three USTA Girls’ 18 Clay Courts Championships at the Mount Pleasant facility.

Emma put on a double clinic in that tournament, winning the Girls' 18s national singles and doubles titles, thanks partly to having Georgia’s Chloe Beck (no relations to this writer) as her longtime doubles partner.

Emma was her own public relations expert, texting or emailing me her results and a critique of her results. I just picked up her quotes and inserted them into my story for the newspaper or my Sunday tennis column.

After her many successes at LTP, I usually still needed quotes for my story. All I had to do was start the tape recorder and ask Emma to critique her match. She did that to perfection.

It was obvious then that Emma had the makings of an outstanding player. That trait became more apparent in 2019 when Emma played the Junior Grand Slams. She was a Junior French Open singles finalist against talented left-handed Canadian Leylah Fernandez, who would make the US Open final two years later.

Navarro lost to Fernandez in the Junior French Open singles final after upending Chinese star and Olympic Gold Medalist Qinwen Zheng in the semifinals. She and Beck won the French Open juniors doubles crowns.

Then, there was the green grass of junior Wimbledon, where Emma was the top seed. I was there the entire week, watching Emma take to the grass as if she were back home at LTP Tennis, playing on the green clay.

When I mentioned that she was the No. 1 seed at Junior Wimbledon, Emma said, “I don’t worry too much about seeding, but it is very cool to be the one seed at Wimbledon.”

She pulled off three straight amazing rallies in matches in which she lost the first set. She advanced to the semifinal in the 2019 Junior Wimbledon.

Navarro crushed then-young Diana Shnaider of Russia, 6-0, 6-2, in her first match at 2019 Junior Wimbledon. Shnaider would later defeat Navarro in 2024 in the semifinals at Bad Homburg. But Navarro reclaimed the edge at this year’s Wimbledon with a victory.

After juniors, Emma was on her way to greatness. A year later, it was off to the University of Virginia. Navarro would win the NCAA singles title as a Virginia sophomore, setting the stage for her starring role on the WTA Tour.

She believes the USTA Pro Circuit and ITF circuit have been crucial to her success.

“I played a bunch of matches on the ITF circuit this year (2023). I think it is kind of a necessary step to get you where you want to be just in terms of building your game and improving your level. I think it is important not to rush anything and go straight to the WTA Tour. I think ITF is where you can learn a lot about yourself and really get better as a player.”

When I interviewed Emma at LTP Tennis before she headed for the 2024 WTA tournaments, I asked her what her goal for this year, she said, “I don’t really have a specific number in mind. I just guess top 10 if I had to put a number on it. That would be nice.”

Navarro has gotten better with every 2024 Grand Slam tournament from the third round at Melbourne at the Australian Open to the round of 16 at the French Open, to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and now the semifinals at the US Open.

Emma has had a steady rise as a tennis player, whether in juniors, college, the USTA Pro Circuit or the Grand Slams. She has been brilliant while keeping her signature cool and playing like the star she is.

And now she is ready to claim that honor after roaring into the semifinals at the US Open. But there’s still business on the court. She could go even higher. Winning the US. Open may not just be a dream.

When will Emma be in the world’s top 10? Emma is projected to be there on Monday.

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James Beck was the 2003 winner of the USTA National Media Award for print media. A 1995 MBA graduate of The Citadel, he can be reached at Jamesbecktennis@gmail.com.