Who is Emma Navarro? The rising US tennis star who beat Coco Gauff at the US Open?

This year has been the best so far for Emma Navarro, who has been steadily on the rise since winning her first title at the Hobart International in January.

Last month, she climbed into 12th place in the WTA ranking, a career high and this week she dumped the defending champion out of the US Open.

Emma Navarro, Coco’s bête noire

It was her second win over world No.3 Coco Gauff in the space of two months. At Wimbledon in July, she beat Gauff 6-4, 6-3 to advance to the quarter finals, where she met her match in eventual runner-up Jasmine Pasolini. She showed that the feat wasn’t a one-off on Sunday by defeating Gauff again, scoring a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 victory over her compatriot to reach her second consecutive Grand Slam quarter final.

The 23-year-old is living the best moment of her career, having shown great potential in several tournaments in 2024. Now, she is just three victories away from her first major title.

Who is 2024 sensation Emma Navarro?

Navarro was born in New York City in 2001 but attended Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, getting really focused on tennis in fourth grade.

“I would get up at around 5.45 a.m. and go play tennis for about an hour before school. Although I’m pretty sure I drove Mrs. Tonks crazy with my tardiness every morning, that was when I started to understand the sacrifices I was going to have to make to achieve my goals in tennis”, she said during an interview.

She debuted in the WTA tour in 2019 at the Charleston Open, after receiving a wild card. The player got international praise when she won the junior French Open doubles title that year and finished as the singles tournament’s runner-up.

Navarro played collegiate level tennis at Virginia from 2020-2022, becoming the 2021 NCAA singles champion, which qualified her for the US Open, her first major.

When did Emma Navarro start to shine?

Although 2024 has been her best year, Navarro started proving she was a star in the making in 2023.

She started going far in different tournaments, picking up several wins in challengers but also a victory at the 2023 French Open. She lifted her first pro title in the WTA tour at the 2024 Hobart International after getting the better of Elise Mertens in three hard-fought sets. Navarro hasn’t stopped improving since then.

She got to the French Open fourth round this year after she beat Madison Keys, but she ended up losing to favorite Aryna Sabalenka after that. She followed that with an impressive run at Wimbledon, seeing off Wang Qiang, Naomi Osaka, Diana Shnaider and Gauff on her way to the last eight.

She made her debut at the 2024 Olympic Games as one of the seeded players. In Paris, she beat Julia Grabher and Viktoriya Tomova before falling to the eventual gold medalist Zheng Qinwen.

Emma made it to the semi-finals of the 2024 National Bank Open and the WTA 500 Monterrey Open. She will face Spain’s Paula Badosa in the quarter final of the US Open - should she win, she will meet whoever emerges from the clash between Zheng Qinwen and Aryna Sabalenka.

Emma Navarro, the daughter of a US billionaire

Some players have become millionaires by becoming good tennis players, others have made their fortunes from being among the very best, and then there’s Emma Navarro.

The world No. 17 is billionaire Ben Navarro’s daughter, founder and chief executive officer of Sherman Financial Group, the company behind Credit One, which has distributed 18 million credit cards to date.

He’s also the former vice-president of Citigroup, with a net worth of US$1.5 billion, according to Forbes. Moreover, Ben Navarro also has investments in tennis and owns the Charleston Open and the Cincinnati Open.