“I used to wear a visor when I was really young, and then I switched over to a hat,” she said after beating Krueger 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. “But when I was maybe 13 or 14, I stopped wearing anything, because I had this tan line. My forehead was super pale, and the rest of my face was really tan, and … I was like, ‘I can’t have this tan line.’ So I stopped wearing anything and haven’t worn anything since. I’ve gotten pretty good at the squint, I guess.”
The seventh time proved the charm for Navarro at the Credit One Charleston Open, who made her WTA main-draw debut at the tournament her father now owns as a wild card in 2019, and hasn’t missed any of the tour events held in the city since.
While she says she’s thought before about what it might be like to hold the trophy on Sunday “before, maybe not a ton this week,” she says that despite her standing-room only practices, and fervent crowd support, her 2025 Charleston effort has been different in that she’s trying to treat the tournament like every other event.
Read more: Emma Navarro’s first stop in Charleston, and more “super niche tennis lessons”
