Climbing the ladder to top-level professional tennis isn’t supposed to be as easy as Emma Navarro has made it look over the last 18 months. The former NCAA champion hasn’t skipped steps in her steady ascent on the WTA tour, and on Sunday at Wimbledon, she’ll hope to level up once more when she faces No.2 seed Coco Gauff with a spot in the quarterfinals up for grabs.
To advance to face Gauff, though, Navarro first needed to overcome a stubborn hurdle: After toppling four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka comprehensively in her Centre Court debut two days prior, the No. 19 seed stared down a one-set deficit Friday on Court 18 against the in-form Diana Shnaider, who came into the match on an eight-match winning streak and with a 10-1 record on grass this summer.
But after one hour and 56 minutes, Navarro walked off court a winner (having hit one more winner than the big-hitting Russian in total), 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.
The comeback was also an example of Navarro’s ability to problem-solve—something that’s become a bit of a trademark in her rise. This year, Navarro was 0-2 against Shnaider, a surging 20-year-old who also played college tennis (for a season at North Carolina State University last year). One of those losses came just seven days ago, in the semifinals of Bad Homburg, a WTA 500 tournament that the left-hander went on to win.
“It was just a matter of can I execute or not, and I was able to for a good bit of the match,” Navarro said after her 15th three-set win of the season.
