She had reached No 143 by the end of that year before skyrocketing through 2023, jumping more than 100 places to No 32. Navarro, who first picked up a racquet as a 3-year-old, then doubled down with a spectacular 2024 season.<\/p>\n
It started with a semi-final appearance in Auckland, beaten by eventual champion Gauff, followed by her first WTA title in Hobart the following week. There was more to come, including a win over world No 2 Sabalenka in reaching the quarter-finals at Indian Wells, then a run to the last eight at Wimbledon, where her victims included Naomi Osaka and Gauff. <\/p>\n
There was a last-four appearance at the Canadian Open \u2013 a WTA 1000 level event \u2013 before the apex came at Flushing Meadows, where she reached the semi-finals of a major for the first time. That pushed her into the top 10, before more recognition as the WTA\u2019s most improved player of the year. <\/p>\n
Given all that success, it was always going to be difficult to back up in 2025. But it was solid. She won another title (at Merida), reached the Australian Open quarter-finals and garnered a solid 32-25 win-loss record, even if there wasn\u2019t the same run of head-turning results across the second half of the season as the year before. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt had its ups and downs for sure,\u201d says Navarro of 2025. \u201cPeople always talk about the sophomore season being the hardest and maybe that was the case for me a little bit.<\/p>\n
\u201c[But] I have to remind myself to not overlook or underestimate the challenge of it all; it is really tough and a lot of the girls are really good.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the way professional sports are and the way the tour is\u2026 it\u2019s not easy, it\u2019s a lot of travel, there\u2019s pressure, there\u2019s expectations, you\u2019re away from your family. I\u2019m always learning and I feel like the level gets higher and higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Great role model\u2019 for being successful<\/p>\n
Though she doesn\u2019t always like talking about it, Navarro\u2019s family lineage is one of the more interesting on the WTA tour. Her grandfather Frank was a famed American Football coach at four different universities, including Princeton and Colombia, while her father Ben is a billionaire who amassed his fortune through finance. <\/p>\n
He is also a tennis nut. His company has a wide-ranging investment portfolio \u2013 from sport to hotels to real estate \u2013 and he owns two prominent tournaments, the Cincinnati Open and the Charleston WTA Open. He paid for a new stadium in Charleston \u2013 as a gift to the city \u2013 and committed to a US$260 million ($450m) renovation of the arena and facilities in Cincinnati. He is also heavily involved in philanthropy and teaches a class at the local university.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s doing incredible stuff in a lot of different facets and he\u2019s so giving and caring with his time and with money,\u201d said Navarro. \u201cHe\u2019s a really great role model for me as a daughter and for a lot of people that are looking to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some on the circuit might imply that things came easy, with the financial advantages, but there tend to be no shortcuts in tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a label I don\u2019t really like,\u201d she told Tatler last year, when asked about being a \u201cbillionaire\u2019s daughter\u201d. \u201cI didn\u2019t grow up being handed things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Navarro has dedicated her life to the sport, with the example of rising at 5am as a 9-year-old for practice and then fitting in a three-hour training session after school.<\/p>\n
Excited to compete again after break<\/p>\n
Before the ASB Classic, Navarro is feeling recharged, after a longer than usual off season, with 10 weeks in South Carolina. <\/p>\n
\u201cI really enjoyed being at home and getting to not feel like a tennis player for a while but I am excited to get out and compete again,\u201d said Navarro.<\/p>\n
Navarro arrived here on January 1 \u2013 \u201cI celebrated New Years\u2019 Eve on the plane\u201d \u2013 and has enjoyed catching up with compatriots here, including a practice session with Jovic. She doesn\u2019t have an opinion on the strength of the field \u2013 \u201cI honestly haven\u2019t looked\u201d \u2013 but is ready for whatever challenges come her way, starting with British world No 73 Francesca Jones in the first round.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me there will be nothing really too different or too new [this week],\u201d said Navarro. \u201cI\u2019ll just keep on keeping on, I guess, and there\u2019s a lot of stuff that I\u2019ve been working on that hopefully I\u2019ll be able to use in a good way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Burgess<\/a> has been a Sports Journalist for the New Zealand Herald since 2005, covering the Olympics, Fifa World Cups, and America\u2019s Cup campaigns. He is a co-host of the Big League podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She had reached No 143 by the end of that year before skyrocketing through 2023, jumping more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8239,25286,1975,51,4915,790,8231,129772,6204,120,129769,129770,111,139,69,90544,10088,34592,213,2737,21694,3217,1361,1961,61,8238,810,686,1533,102,129771],"class_list":["post-214559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-american","tag-asb","tag-at","tag-auckland","tag-classic","tag-emma","tag-event","tag-exponent","tag-fine","tag-likely","tag-lowkey","tag-navarro","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-perfectly","tag-radar","tag-ready","tag-sports","tag-star","tag-step","tag-tennis","tag-that","tag-this","tag-to","tag-under","tag-up","tag-week","tag-will","tag-with","tag-wta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}