Emma Navarro made it look easy on Wednesday afternoon.
The 23-year-old crushed Naomi Osaka in under an hour in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1, at Centre Court to move on to Wimbledon’s third round.
Ranked No. 19 in the world, Navarro hasn’t lost a set during her two matches in the tournament.
“That’s an atmosphere that could easily overwhelm me, or overwhelm any player, and I spent just a good amount of time preparing myself mentally for the emotions and the nerves I was going to feel. Then once I got out there, I just felt really at home,” Navarro told reporters after beating the four-time Grand Slam winner Osaka.
Now, as she moves into the third round, The Post takes a deeper dive into Navarro’s background as a burgeoning tennis star.
Born in New York City in 2001, Navarro, who has said she got serious about tennis in fourth grade, was a highly touted junior tennis star in South Carolina while attending Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina.
She burst onto the scene in 2019, winning the junior French Open doubles title with Chloe Beck while finishing as the singles tournament’s runner-up.
With all of her success as a junior player, Navarro was the No. 1 recruit in the nation, according to TennisRecruiting.net’s rankings, and enrolled at the University of Virginia in the fall of 2020.
Navarro continued her wide-ranging success with the Cavaliers, becoming the 2021 NCAA singles champion, just the second ever to do so in program history.
Her 2021 also saw her win her first main-draw WTA singles match when she beat Renata Zarazua at the Volvo Car Open in Charleston in straight sets before she made her way into the U.S. Open as a wild card.
She concluded her collegiate career as a sophomore during the 2021-22 season as an ITA singles and doubles All-American.
Navarro has continued to blossom as a pro, winning her first WTA title this January when she claimed the Hobart International crown while reaching the third round of the Australian Open and fourth at the French Open.
She was born to Kelly and Ben Navarro, who is the billionaire founder and chief operating officer of the Sherman Financial Group that runs Credit One.
Ben, who attempted to buy the Carolina Panthers in 2018, bought the Western & Southern Open tennis tournament in Cincinnati in 2022 under Beemok Capital.
He is the son of former college football coach Frank Navarro, who had tenures at Williams College, Columbia, Wabash College and Princeton.
“As a fan, father, and business owner, tennis has brought so much to our family,” Ben told The Post and Courier in 2019. “Junior tennis has provided a place for our children to learn a work ethic, develop friendship through shared struggle, and learn to handle disappointment, defeat, and sometimes even unfairness.”
Navarro is taking on Russian-born Diana Shnaider — an NC State product — in the third round of Wimbledon on Friday.
