Emma Navarro has done it again. Navarro held on late on Sunday afternoon and took advantage of a struggling Coco Gauff to knock off the defending US Open champion at her first-ever match at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Navarro beat Gauff 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 in their fourth-round match to earn a spot in the quarterfinals for the first time in her career. It also matches her best finish ever at a Grand Slam.
This is pretty much all anyone needs to know about defending champion Coco Gauff's 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 loss to Emma Navarro in the U.S. Open's fourth round on Sunday: Gauff wound up with more double-faults, 19, than winners, 14.
Four of those came after she dropped the opening set — including in the 2023 final and during her third-round victory on Friday — but the 20-year-old from Florida could not complete the comeback this time. That’s despite a mid-match, four-game run in which she claimed 14 of 17 points to steal the second set and get off to a good start in the third.
“Had a little bit of a lull there,” said the 13th-seeded Navarro, who was 0-2 at the U.S. Open until this year, “but I was able to regroup … and come into the third set with a fresher mindset.”
After each of her past two contests in New York, Gauff headed back out onto the practice courts to work on her serve. That didn’t help much on Sunday, including a trio of double-faults in each of three games — two of which she lost, at 1-1 in the first set and, more significantly, at 1-1 in the third. Eleven of the double-faults came in the final set alone.
Aside from those issues, Gauff finished with a total of 60 unforced errors — a whopping 29 on her forehand side, the biggest weakness in her game. The 23-year-old Navarro, who also eliminated Gauff in the fourth round at Wimbledon in July, was far steadier on Sunday and had 35 unforced errors.
“Coco’s an amazing player, and I have a ton of respect for her,” said Navarro, a U.S. teammate of Gauff’s at the Paris Olympics, “and I know she’s going to come back and win this thing again one year.”
This result follows the surprising third-round loss by defending men’s champion Novak Djokovic on Friday night, meaning the lengthy droughts without anyone winning consecutive titles in New York will continue. The last woman to win at least two in a row was Serena Williams with three from 2012 to 2014; the last man was Roger Federer with five from 2004 to 2008.
The Wimbledon win over Gauff earned Navarro, the 2021 NCAA singles champion for the University of Virginia, her first appearance in a major quarterfinal. Her second will come Tuesday in New York against No. 26 Paula Badosa, a 6-1, 6-2 winner against Wang Yafan.
Earlier Sunday, with 23-time Grand Slam champion Williams watching in Arthur Ashe Stadium and offering a thumbs-up at match’s end, No. 9 men’s seed Grigor Dimitrov held off Andrey Rublev 6-3, 7-6 (3), 1-6, 3-6, 6-3 to get to the quarterfinals.
The No. 6-seeded Rublev is known for violent displays of frustration, and he needed medical attention from a trainer for a cut on his left hand after hitting it against his racket in the first set. He slapped himself in the face during a meltdown in the second-set tiebreaker, which he led 3-1 before losing the next six points.
Dimitrov now faces No. 20 Frances Tiafoe or No. 28 Alexei Popyrin, the player who stunned Djokovic on Friday.
Also moving on Saturday was No. 12 Taylor Fritz, who beat three-time Grand Slam finalist Casper Ruud 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. Fritz’s next opponent will either be another American, Brandon Nakashima, or 2020 U.S. Open runner-up Alexander Zverev of Germany.
Coco Gauff's Slump Continues
Navarro is playing in her hometown city and looks a credible contender for a maiden Grand Slam title, having beaten her opponent for the second-successive time in a Grand Slam. Gauff was off the pace for much of the tournament and exited at the first sign of real competition. She was not helped by her serve going missing in action as the 2023 champion sent down 19 double faults and fired 60 unforced errors.
Gauff’s loss to Navarro marks the continuation of a disappointing summer for the young star, who began the season with a semifinal defeat to Iga Swiatek at the French Open. For months before that, she had been one of the most consistent players in the game, finding ways to hide her weaknesses and playing safer, higher-arcing forehands to make her points longer and her matches more physical.
The Rise of Emma Navarro
Navarro is fast becoming a major force in tennis. She smothered the defending champion in front of Serena Williams, Stephen Colbert, Michael Che, and nearly 24,000 fans in Arthur Ashe Stadium, by turning an occasion that could have been decided by pressure, emotion, and drama into a contest of technique that Gauff was never going to win.
Navarro, who has shot up the rankings in the last year, became the NCAA champion with the Virginia Cavaliers. Now she is the No. 13 seed at her home Grand Slam and rising still, her weaknesses falling away with each passing month.
“It’s pretty insane,” Navarro said. “This is the city I was born in and it feels so special to be playing here.”
This was always going to be a rough matchup for Gauff, not least because of the inevitable scar tissue from the loss at Wimbledon in July. Gauff entered that match as a favorite, not just to beat Navarro, but to get to the final, with so many of the other top players having already fallen. Then Navarro appeared across the net, doing what she has done pretty much all year. She ran down ball after ball, extending rallies and simply refusing to miss, hanging in there long enough for Gauff’s Achilles heels — the instability of her forehand and of her serve — to let her down.
On Sunday, she brought all that and more. Block returns of Gauff’s 120 mph serves went deep enough to send her backpedaling. Stab returns of seeming winners stole points. And on a warm, still and humid afternoon, she proved that her fitness is equal to that of Gauff, who is known as just about the fittest player in the sport.
Looking Ahead
Gauff’s loss is a setback, but it’s unlikely to derail her long-term prospects. She is still young and has plenty of time to learn and grow. For Navarro, this win is a new, firm data point to back up the longer-standing, softer feeling that these two players may spend a lot of time together going forward, at the top of the rankings and in late rounds of the biggest tournaments. Navarro is three years older than Gauff, but they have known each other, and been friendly, since their early years in junior tennis. Gauff was a prodigy then, playing two and three age-groups up, and Navarro was merely a normally gifted player. Everything about them appears in contrast. Gauff is a product of the expanding Black middle class. Navarro is the daughter of a banker, and her family is among the wealthiest in the country. Gauff was winning matches at Wimbledon at 15, beating Venus Williams in 2019. Navarro went to college, a later bloomer thanks to her reputation as one of the hardest-working players in the game. The match ended on her terms. Gauff double-faulted for match point. Then she missed a first serve. From the second, Navarro thumped a return deep, and Gauff’s forehand erred again.
