This month, Navarro returns for Credit One Charleston Open as the hometown favorite
Black sharpie in hand, Emma Navarro bent down and cocked her beaming face toward the television camera as she was exiting the court at the 2025 Australian Open, then jotted “me (heart) 3 sets” on the lens. She’d just beaten Ons Jabeur at the season’s first major, but it hadn’t been easy. Down a break in the third set, she scrambled to save three break points before climbing back into the match and ultimately defeating the three-time Grand Slam champion. At Indian Wells in 2024—Navarro’s breakthrough season on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour—the then 22-year-old similarly took the world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka to three sets, winning 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 after long rallies, including one gasp-evoking back-and-forth that ended in what the commentator excitedly declared a “bonkers point!” after Navarro nailed a passing volley. That was just one of 25 grueling, three-set matches the WTA Most Improved Player tallied that year. She won 21 of them, delivering a message her opponents have learned the hard way: when Navarro’s across the net, take nothing for granted.
Though she’s still a relative newbie on the pro tour, her grit and tenacity are now well-known, as is her lighthearted spunk, evident in the cheeky camera lens scribble. Navarro is a triple-C (calm, cool, collected) threat, whose rise has been rapid and electrifying. In April 2023, she was ranked outside the top 100 yet finished as world No. 32. Then in 2024, her first season playing top-tier tournaments, she vaulted into the top 10 after reaching the US Open semifinals—her deepest Grand Slam run to date. Scrappy on court and cheerfully goofy off it, the 24-year-old has become a perpetually poised, fierce competitor and an easy crowd favorite, which she’ll undoubtedly be as the hometown girl at the 2026 Credit One Charleston Open on Daniel Island this month. She’ll also have a decided home court advantage, given her father, Charleston businessman Ben Navarro, owns the tournament and stadium.
“Mom! I just passed a billboard—of me!” Navarro exclaimed to her mother, Kelly, after spotting a promo along I-26 for last year’s Credit One. This new-found fame and attention can still catch Navarro off guard, and she occasionally misses the more anonymous, amateur days playing small-town tournaments: “You know, when there’s no one there watching, and it’s just you out there grinding away in bad weather, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh man, I wish could be playing in Madrid or whatever,’” she reminisces. But playing in Madrid or in Paris, Beijing, London, Montreal, Sydney—you name it—is no longer just a wish. Navarro is, as they say, living the dream. Her dream, at least. The one she’s had since seventh grade, when she told her English teacher, Rene Miles, that her goal was to play in the French Open. The dream that began at East Bay Street’s Hazel Parker Playground, where a four-year-old Navarro used to hit balls, or attempt to, with her parents and two older brothers on the weekends (sister, Meggie, was too young). “We’d walk or RipStik over from our house on Atlantic Street,” she says. “My dad liked tennis because it was something we could all play together.”
That dream was further nurtured when the family would go watch the women’s tournament that was then called the Family Circle Cup. “We went pretty much every year, always sitting up in the 300 section,” Navarro recalls. “I’d watch a little, but also just hang out, drink big lemonades.” You know, kid stuff. When she plays the Credit One these days, she says, “I think about myself sitting up there in the top rows, looking down at the players we could barely see. It felt like they weren’t even in the same realm as everybody else.”
Now, she’s front and center court in that realm: the world of international travel and Grand Slams. The world of Tennis Channel and ESPN spotlights, of on-court interviews and fans clamoring for autographs (“Not one goes unsigned,” she winks at a cameraman as she pauses to make the day of yet another little girl with an oversized tennis ball). The world of intense pressure playing top-ranked opponents, of exhilaration and physical and mental exhaustion. The world of social media and press conferences, of sponsorship deals, photo shoots, and tennis as big business. A world her dad knows well, too, now that his Beemok Sports & Entertainment owns not only the Credit One Charleston Open, a WTA top-ranked 500-level tournament (Credit One is a bank operated by Sherman Financial Group, which Ben Navarro founded) but also the Cincinnati Open, the country’s third-largest tennis event.
In other words, a world away from that young family who relocated to Charleston after fleeing New York City (Emma’s birthplace) post 9/11 and landed South of Broad, just a block away from the Hazel Parker public courts, and the days when her older brother, Earl, would handily beat her, but she kept playing him anyway. “Now, I think I’d slaughter him—or at least I better,” she laughs. And now, when Earl and oldest brother, Owen, sister, Meggie, and her parents, Ben and Kelly, go watch the Credit One or other tournaments, their seats are in the player’s box, not the rafters. For the Navarros, tennis has morphed from family pastime to family business.
“I’ve never met a kid with such determination,” says Miles, a retired School of the Arts creative writing teacher who’s taught thousands of middle and high schoolers. She taught Navarro from grade seven through 10, when the young prodigy asked to be homeschooled in order to focus more on tennis. “Early on, I asked her why she wanted this, acknowledging all that she was missing out on at school, and she looked right at me, without hesitation, and said she wanted to play in the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. I don’t know that they [her parents] thought that might actually ever happen, but Emma did. She knew what she wanted and what she needed to do to get there,” says Miles.
Yes, her family had the resources to support her dreams (the tutors, the travel, the supplemental coaching), but Navarro brought the doggedness—and the dog, Marti, the family’s beloved Bernedoodle—on and off the court. She was as diligent with her schoolwork, according to Miles, as she was with practice. “Emma would revise papers over and over and was a sponge for the literature I assigned; she ate it up,” Miles says. “She’d do whatever I asked, and I asked a lot.” Navarro went to Ashley Hall for high school, where she played on the tennis team when she wasn’t traveling for other tournaments. “They called me ‘the bullet’ and would bring me in for big matches, like against Bishop England,” she chuckles. While at Ashley Hall, she straddled two worlds: being a typical, fun-loving teenager—“the class clown,” her former Ashley Hall classmate and close friend Morgan Davis says—and striving to become an elite athlete. By then, she’d begun working closely with coach Peter Ayers, a tennis pro for LTP (Live to Play)—the Mount Pleasant tennis club and academy under the Beemok umbrella—and maintained a rigid practice and competition schedule outside of school. “I’ll never forget the night of our junior prom,” Davis says. “She’d played a match at Credit One [tournament] that day and sadly lost, then rushed back to get ready with our group of friends. She had like 30 minutes to get dressed. A makeup lady put on way too much makeup that Emma had to redo. She was so tired but wasn’t going to miss it.”
Ayers recalls his first time on court with Emma, then around age 11. “I remember it clearly; I’d been coaching a good while by then and watching her, I thought, ‘Man, the connection between the eyes and hands is spectacular.’ Her ball-to-ball focus never wavered. I could have tossed her balls for hours, which is pretty remarkable for a kid that age,” says the former Duke tennis star-turned-pro. Ayers began coaching Navarro around age 14 when she was competing on the USTA Junior Circuit. Four years later, in 2019, she realized her childhood dream of playing at Roland Garros, where she became a French Open Junior Girls’ Singles finalist and the Junior Girls’ Doubles champion alongside teammate and fellow Charlestonian Chloe Beck. He’s been her primary coach ever since, a remarkably long run in the tennis world. “That speaks to Emma’s amazing loyalty, trust, and belief in the path we’re going toward,” he says.
Ayers was pivotal when Navarro was weighing whether to leave college—she played for the University of Virginia (UVA), where she won the NCAA Singles Championship her freshman year—and go pro. “I loved my college experience. I loved my classes and being on the team, but I also felt certain it was now or never,” she explains. Education, however, has always been a Navarro-family priority—Ben and Kelly began Meeting Street Schools and have committed millions of dollars to ensure college is accessible to all high-achieving South Carolina students via the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund. “Growing up, they made sure I understood it was always school before tennis. Every day when we got home from school, my dad would ask us to tell him one thing we learned that day,” Navarro says. “But I think they also realized that college can be a bit of a limbo period, and if you feel like you have the ability and the desire to go do something unrelated to school, then go do it. I could always go back.”
When she drove home from Charlottesville to hash it out, she went straight to Ayer. “We sat on his back porch, and he suggested signing a two-year contract with myself, promising to see this through for a couple of years, even if it’s ugly and I feel like I’m not good enough or the results aren’t where I think they should be,” says Navarro, who followed his advice. By the time the contract was up, she’d broken into the top 10. “Yeah, I don’t think we even revisited it,” she laughs. “It was like, ‘Okay, I think this is working out pretty well. Let’s keep going.’”
Women’s tennis has always had its darlings, and they’ve all been showcased, at one time or another, at the Family Circle Cup-turned-Credit One Charleston Open. Icon Billie Jean King led the way, with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova dominating from the 1970s to the mid ’80s when Steffi Graf emerged, and then the Williams sisters took over. “Emma’s never been the biggest or the tallest or fastest, but no one underestimates her anymore,” Ayers says. Nor is she the court fashionista that Naomi Osaka is, nor as petulant as Jelena Ostapenko, nor as dramatic as Danielle Collins. Navarro keeps her head down, her heart, hopes, and dreams wide open. “We talk a lot about goals and dreams,” Ayers says. “Her dreams may include lifting a huge trophy one day, but the goals stay the same. The goal isn’t defined by results—it’s walking away from every practice, every match, every day a little better. Those little goals keep getting achieved.”
Navarro prefers “showing up as my best self” to showmanship. She’s quiet, respectful, and unrelenting. “Emma Navarro is a human backboard,” Chris Evert proclaimed during a Wimbledon broadcast, as Navarro dismantled world No. 2 Coco Gauff in 2024. “Where did she come from, where did she come from?” asked Evert, stunned by Navarro’s gutsy play and seemingly sudden emergence. “Charleston!” answered her counterpart, veteran tennis commentator Chris Fowler.
Navarro indeed hails from Charleston, but she also comes from years of dedication and hard work—from 5 a.m. practices starting in fourth grade; from sacrificing high school dances and dates for boring road trips to endless no-name tournaments; from one girl’s steely will and unstoppable drive. “I am at my best when I have a very clear, specific goal that I’m working towards achieving. And when I have that, I get very stubborn, and I get very motivated,” Navarro says, acknowledging she comes by it honestly. “My siblings and I have had the two best role models you could ever have. My grandfather [college football coach Frank Navarro] was this immovable force, so tough and totally unfazed by anything and everything. He was also funny and irreverent, and a great storyteller,” she says. “My dad is very similar—so, so tough and the hardest working, most dedicated guy I’ve ever met. He’s an incredible problem solver who never gives up.”
Coach Ayers affirms that Emma follows suit. “She loves a challenge. That was ingrained in her before I ever set eyes on her. She revels in taking them on and isn’t afraid to be uncomfortable. She’s methodical, intentional, and has this ability to stay in the moment and play each point,” he says. “I don’t know anyone who’s more grounded or more humble, which is a credit to her upbringing. It’s true for her siblings, too.”
Now that she’s more confident and comfortable in the spotlight, fans are getting more glimpses of Navarro’s zippy wit and sly humor, her silly dance moves and winning smile. “It was surreal to watch her first year of success—it still doesn’t feel real,” says her younger sister Meggie, affirming that Emma remains humble and grounded, the same jokester she’s always been. “She’s stoic on the court, but hilarious off it, definitely the funniest person in our family,” notes Meggie, now a senior at UVA and a force on the tennis team. Though Meggie doesn’t plan on playing professionally, the sisters did compete in doubles together at the 2025 Cincinnati Open. “I was super nervous the whole week—unlike Emma, I’ve never played in front of big crowds—but when we got out on the court, it was just like we were kids again. We lost, but it didn’t feel like it,” she says. On the golf cart ride back to the locker room, they caught each other’s eyes and “we both had little tears of happiness.”
“I’m pretty much an open book. What you see is what you get,” Navarro says. And what crowds hope to see at Credit One will be more of her dazzling shots, dominating hustle, and savvy play. “I feel so proud to come from Charleston and be supported by local tennis fans,” she says. “People love having the tournament here, being able to go out and see the players they watch on TV playing in their backyard. So, yes, I feel a responsibility to do well for them and hopefully win some matches. While I try not to focus on results, just on playing my best, if I had to pick one tournament to win, yeah, it’d be Credit One. Which will either make or break me, I guess,” she adds, serving up a giggly shrug. “We’ll see.”
Watch Emma being interviewed after her Second Round win at last year’s Charleston Open.
Watch highlights of Emma Navarro vs. Caty McNally in Round 2 of the 2025 US Open.
