NEW YORK – It was a hot and muggy Sunday afternoon as Emma Navarro made her debut in Arthur Ashe Stadium against reigning champion Coco Gauff.
But Navarro’s family did not nickname her “Ice Girl” in her childhood without good reason.
Navarro, the newest American tennis star, remained cool in the heat and under pressure, handling the grand occasion and a second-set wobble with more poker-faced aplomb than Gauff and putting an end to her new friend’s title defense with a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 victory in the fourth round.
Less than two months ago, Navarro beat Gauff at the same stage of Wimbledon. That straight-set victory felt like a significant upset, but this narrower Navarro triumph seemed more like a duel between equals.
Navarro, born in New York and raised in Charleston, has been on an upward trajectory for two seasons since leaving the University of Virginia, where she won an NCAA singles title. But she has made her biggest breakthrough in 2024 and will now face the resurgent Spaniard Paula Badosa, also born in New York, for a spot in the US Open semifinals.
Gauff, after shining so brightly to win her first major at age 19, has flickered in and out of form this season instead of using the US Open victory as a springboard to domination.
She has won just one title this year, and that came in her first tournament in Auckland, New Zealand where she beat Navarro 6-3, 6-1 in the semifinals. That was hardly foreshadowing. Sunday’s result dropped Gauff from three to six in the live singles rankings and moved Navarro into the top 10 for the first time. They are increasingly occupying the same space and got to know each other well in Paris in July as Olympic teammates.
“She's super funny,” Gauff said on Sunday. “She's kind of the opposite of how she is on court. She has a lot of personality, but she doesn't show it as much to you guys. But, yeah, she's super nice. I always root for her. It was a battle today, but you know, if you had to lose, I would rather lose to a good person off the court, you know?”
They are part of the same generation even if Navarro, at 23, is a comparatively late arrival. Gauff has been a star since she reached the fourth round at Wimbledon at age 15. She is 20 now but her weaknesses (and stressors) remain: an inconsistent forehand and unreliable second serve.
The serve did her in again this time, even on a court where she had so many happy recent memories. Gauff served three double faults in her opening service game and still managed to hold, but she could only conjure so many of those great escapes. She served 19 double faults in all, including 11 in the decisive third set.
The yips can be brutal for any athlete and tough for the rest of us to watch. There were a few collective groans from the 23,000 fans in Ashe Stadium as Gauff missed first serves down the stretch. Like Gauff, the fans feared what was coming next.
“I was just trying to commit to it and just stay calm,” Gauff said of her second serve.
She has been here before, but it was not always easy for Navarro to navigate either.
“There’s not a lot of rhythm,” Navarro said to ESPN. “When she did put a second serve in the court, she was serving upper 90s, low 100s on her second serve. It’s tough not to feel like I have to put this return in the court. I lost a couple of return games where she double faulted three or four times, which is a little bit of a tough pill to swallow, knowing that I was handed three or four points and I couldn’t capitalize on it. But I just tried to stay super aggressive and keep going after my returns and if any doubt crept in, just meet it with good split steps and just feeling confident.”
Up a break and 4-3, 30-0 on her own serve in the second set, Navarro blinked and lost the next three games. Up a break and 4-3 in the third set, she sealed the deal with help from the increasingly demoralized Gauff.
“I think both of us faced our own struggles at times,” Navarro said. “I think it was a little bit of a battle of will there for a bit. But yeah, proud of just my effort today. I was able to stick in there through some tough moments. I wasn’t able to close out the second set, which was tough, but I was able to reset and come back out and meet a really similar moment in the third set a little bit better.”
The shot that sticks with you came in the final set at 0-15 with her serving at 4-3. Gauff had seemingly won the point with a sharp angle, but Navarro, flowing to her left, came up with an improvisational single-handed flick of a backhand lob that cleared Gauff and extended the rally, which Navarro went on to win.
It was an elegant, athletic scramble and a reminder that a big part of Navarro’s rise has been her improved quickness and fitness.
“Coming out of college, she has gotten in such great shape,” said Rennae Stubbs, the veteran player, coach and ESPN analyst. “She doesn’t have a lot of weaknesses in that game of hers.”
Navarro’s serve, particularly her low-velocity second serve, can still make her vulnerable. Her straight-arm Federesque forehand, which she calls her “wild child”, can still betray her under duress.
But she has a true all-court game full of flair and can bring the heat with her groundstrokes and smack a backhand down the line with the best of them. And though it is very early in her pro career, she seems to have a big-match, big-court temperament. She beat Naomi Osaka and Gauff this year in her first two matches on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Now she has beaten Gauff in her Ashe debut. But Navarro’s zenitude is a big contrast with the volume-cranking, fist-pumping, territory-marking customs of the day. Navarro is not one to celebrate a winner with a scream and a wide-eyed look.
She is more the chessmaster, Chrissie Evert style, who was, lest we forget, nicknamed Ice Maiden. Navarro got her own childhood nickname because her unflappable demeanor made her uncles think of Navarro’s mother Kelly, whom they had dubbed “Ice Woman”.
For Navarro, competing with that unusual temperament has had its challenges, as she told me in an in-depth interview earlier this season.
“On the court, it’s been harder for me to kind of hype myself up in the past more than calm myself down,” she said “I’ve been too relaxed and too chill, which is probably something not a lot of other players would say.”
She has had to push herself to be proactive instead of reactive. But it is working, and she now favors aggressive tactics like taking the ball on the rise and moving forward.
“Now I see those types of situations as less of a choice and more of, I have to take this on in this way,” she said on Sunday. “Partially because the players I’m playing against, they’ll shut it down if I don’t make that more confident, aggressive choice. And also just because I think I have more belief in myself to be able to actually execute those types of shots.”
Belief, as ever, is critical in a game where the margins are routinely so thin. But though the match with Badosa on Tuesday will only be Navarro’s second Grand Slam quarterfinal, she is increasingly comfortable embracing her newly elite status.
Australian star Nick Kyrgios, moonlighting as an ESPN analyst, pushed her on Sunday, asking if “in your heart” she thought she could win the title.
“Asking the tough questions,” Navarro said to Kyrgios with her Charleston lilt. “Yeah, I think deep down I do believe it. I’m almost hesitant to say it, because it’s a scary thing, putting it out there.”
It can be daunting once you win that major, too, as Gauff’s travails in 2024 make plain. My colleague Stephen Tignor compared her performance in her title defense to Pete Sampras’s unsuccessful run in 1991. Sampras, who had won the US Open in 1990 as a teenager, sounded eager to rid himself of that burden after his quarterfinal loss to Stefan Edberg. But Sampras eventually recovered his mojo and went on to win 14 major singles titles in total and finish at No. 1 for six straight seasons.
The Sampras comparison crossed my mind as well, even if Gauff never seemed remotely eager to be rid of the crown. Nor did Sampras face the same technical and mental obstacles that Gauff is clearly confronting.
It is hard to see her solving that second-serve issue on her own. Aryna Sabalenka tried all manner of solutions when she got the serving yips in 2022, finally working through it with biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan.
But big-moment pressure can be very difficult to truly replicate, as I heard from performance psychologists when I researched Rory McIlroy’s putting yips at this year’s US Open in a piece for the New York Times.
Gauff, who already has two accomplished coaches in American Brad Gilbert and Frenchman Jean-Christophe Faurel, looks like she needs extra help. She sounds ready for it, too.
“I definitely want to get other opinions,” she said. “Also, I think it’s sometimes more of an emotional, mental thing, because I go out on the practice court right now, I would make, like, 30 serves in a row. I’ve done it before. I think it’s also just kind of a mental hurdle that I have to get over, but I definitely want to look at other things because I don’t want to lose matches like this anymore.”
Who can blame her? Gauff defends and covers court like few women in tennis history once the rally gets underway, but on Sunday, her weakness too often eliminated her strength.
CC
Coco needs to read Chapter 3 of "The Master" to find out who to go to to find the answer as to how to cast her demons adrift, re-work and re-define her game and become the great player that she can/could really become.
It worked for Roger.
Gauff needs to change coaches. BG may have worked last year but she doesn’t seem to be listening to him anymore. Had she played the way she can play she would have won. Navarro seems to be the flavor of the moment but she’s not nor do I see her on the same level as Iga, Sabalenka or Zheng who I think has a very good shot to win it all.