Emma Navarro’s quarterfinal run earlier this month at Wimbledon, global tennis’s most hallowed tournament, placed her firmly among the constellation of tennis stars who will attract the most attention at the Paris Olympic Games. That is because of her Wimbledon performance. But it is also because of her personality, on and off the court. Her steady composure combined with her quiet confidence makes her a key former Cavalier to watch in this year’s Games.
She was asked, in the interview room after multiple Wimbledon matches, how she was feeling. It happened after her second-round dismantling of Naomi Osaka, after her third-round defeat of Diana Shnaider and after her fourth-round thumping of No. 2 seed Coco Gauff.
“Yeah, feeling good,” Navarro said after her second-round match.
“Yeah, feeling good,” Navarro said after her third-round match.
“Yeah, feeling really good,” Navarro said after her fourth-round match.
This is how Navarro operates. The word “even-keeled” keeps materializing in descriptions of her, so much so that it feels intrinsically tied to her, a part of her makeup.
“I’ve always just had a really chilled out demeanor, I guess,” Navarro said. “So that part comes naturally to me.”
Three years after becoming the NCAA women’s singles champion as a freshman, and two years after departing Virginia following her sophomore season, Navarro has rocketed up to the No. 15 world ranking ahead of the Olympic tennis competition.
She exists in a fascinating liminal space. On the one hand, Navarro is a relative stranger to major tennis’ brightest spotlights, known to only the devoted tennis fan until her Wimbledon run catapulted her into the casual fan’s consciousness.
On the other hand, though, she is presently garnering fervent admiration. The television feed flipped from the court to the studio after Navarro’s defeat of Gauff, and one of the people seated at the desk, an excited Darren Cahill, made a pronouncement.
“She is my new favorite female player,” Cahill said.
Navarro, in a sense, has it all. She has exceptional ability, steady but dynamic. She has the on-court demeanor, all unruffled stares, composed fist pumps and steely gazes. She has the humility, rarely a detectable hint of arrogance. She operates with a formidable quiet confidence, uncommon and almost uncanny, her emotions rarely emerging during matches.
“I played the best tennis I’ve ever played in my life this tournament,” Navarro said, not long after her quarterfinal loss. “It’s really exciting to know I have that level inside of me. I know I’ll keep improving on it.”
That precocious confidence, however, belies Navarro’s big-stage inexperience. Her showdown with Osaka marked her first Centre Court appearance. An uncertain Navarro, ambling first onto the court, suffered a moment of hesitancy.
“I wasn’t sure about Centre Court protocol,” Navarro said in a Tennis Channel interview. “No introduction. No music. Nothing. They just open the big doors and you walk out.”
She proceeded to make a four-time Grand Slam champion look helpless. After the victory, as always, she exchanged text messages with her college coaches and teammates. That included Danielle Collins, the Class of 2016 alumna who has starred on the women’s professional tour for years and reached the 2022 Australian Open final.
“It’s pretty cool to have somebody else out on tour that you have that connection with,” Navarro said. “[To] feel like you’re in each other’s corner, no matter what.”
Collins has also traveled to Paris alongside Navarro as part of the U.S. team. The pair, playing against the rest of the world’s best at Roland-Garros, now participates in tennis’ quadrennial oddity, a tournament nobody quite agrees how to feel about.
A gentle smattering of top players elected to forego the Olympics, either citing concerns about the transition between playing surfaces or choosing to pursue the available world rankings points awaiting a threadbare field at the tour’s regularly scheduled stop in Washington, D.C. But Navarro, speaking before her spot in the Olympics had been confirmed, made her choice clear.
“It would be a huge deal to me just to be able to play for my country, wear USA on the back of my shirt and to be able to just play the sport that I love playing for the country that I’m from,” Navarro said. “I take a lot of pride in that.”
She has entered the tournament riding the hottest streak of tennis of her life. Anything is possible, and her belief in herself is mounting.
“I’m believing that this is possible as it’s happening,” Navarro said. “I’m starting to think, Why not me? Why not? Why can’t I make a quarterfinal run? Why can’t I go deep in Grand Slams?”
Why can’t she go deep in the Olympics? Armed with that undercurrent of quiet confidence and that even-keeled disposition, she just might.
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