Emma Navarro, the surprise of U.S. tennis, surprises again with win over Madison Keys

Emma Navarro, it seems safe to say now, is good at surprising people. Or at least she’s good at surprising me.

When she first began to appear in main draws in early 2023, she didn’t appear to be the proverbial Next Great American hope.

First, she’s a slight 5'7", in a women’s game that regularly crosses the 6-foot threshold these days.

Second, while she won an NCAA singles title at the University of Virginia, that accomplishment has never been a guarantee of success at the pro level. For decades, the fact that a player went to college in the first place was taken as a knock against him or her.

Third, there was no single shot, including her serve, that looked like would be a surefire weapon that she could fall back on.

Yet here we are a little more than a year later, and Navarro is ranked 24th in the world, is 35-12 on the season, and is into the fourth round at a Grand Slam event for the first time, on a surface that has always bedeviled her countrymen and women. On Saturday, the 23-year-old knocked out the woman who may have been playing the best tennis of any American coming into Roland Garros, Madison Keys, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (3).

Now Navarro will take on second seed Aryna Sabalenka. When the tournament started, I was looking ahead to a possible matchup between Sabalenka and Keys, two of the WTA’s premier sluggers. But Navarro has surprised me again, not just with the win over Keys, but with the way she made it happen.

She won by charging forward on Keys’ high-kicking second serve and taking the ball on the rise. It’s a risky ploy, and she missed a few early. But unlike some players, Navarro didn’t let that discourage her. She kept at it, and it paid off in the first-set tiebreaker, when she hit two of those returns for winners.

She won with her backhand drop shot. Navarro carves it with feel and precision, and while she hits it with more height than, say, Novak Djokovic, she still drops it close to the net. That combination produces a shot that’s both safe and hard for her opponent to reach. Navarro looks confident when she comes under the ball; she hits the shot with aggression and enthusiasm, rather than simply as a way to end a rally. There’s an enthusiasm to it.

“I love to scramble, I love to get scrappy, as my coach says. It’s one of the things that I love the most about the game. Just kind of that cat-and-mouse aspect of sort of playing,” she says.

She won by counterpunching. Keys is one of the hardest hitters on either tour, but Navarro’s excellent timing allowed her to send that pace back across the net, and into the open court. Keys finished with 40 winners, but Navarro held her own with 30.

She won with athleticism. On one point, Navarro closed with a jumping overhead. On another, late in the match, she ended a rally with a high-degree-of-difficulty running swing volley.

Navarro says reaching the pros has brought about a “mindset shift.”

“When I was younger, I played in a way where I wanted to work myself into points and work myself into matches,” she said earlier this spring. “But at this level there’s no time for that. You’re either striking or you’re getting struck. I’d rather do the former.”

“Just, yeah, being comfortable enough to make the first move.”

And the last move. Navarro had her ups and downs in this match, getting broken four times and committing nearly as many errors as she had winners. But she was the more composed player in each tiebreaker. At 5-5 in the first breaker, she came out on top in a long rally to reach set point. In the second breaker, she closed with an ace. It was just her second of the day, but it came at the best moment possible.

So Navarro, rather than Keys, will get a crack at Sabalenka next. The South Carolina native already has a win over the world No. 2 this season, at Indian Wells.

Navarro obviously likes the kind of pace that Keys and Sabalenka bring. She can take it and make something better, and more fun to watch, out of it. We’ll see what surprises she has in store on Monday.