Emma Navarro must be enjoying London. The 23-year-old rising star of American tennis is serving up the season of her life at Wimbledon this year, playing her way into the quarter final by routing two grand slam champions and reaching a career-high ranking of 17th in the world.
As we have come to expect from the lawns of Centre Court, the great and the good of European nobility have been watching on from the Royal Box as Navarro makes her stratospheric rise to tennis’ upper echelons. As if the fourth round pressure of taking on Coco Gauff – compatriot, US Open champion, number two seed – wasn’t enough, Navarro has been playing in front of Lord Frederik Windsor, Sophie Winkelman, the Duchess of Gloucester, Selma Hayek, and François-Henri Pinault.
Yet her stellar performance shows that Emma Navarro is by no means intimidated by the shimmering status of Wimbledon’s wealthiest fans: the tennis phenom is, after all, a scion of one of America’s richest families, and worth more than Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal combined. Her father, Ben Navarro, is the billionaire businessman behind Credit One Bank and has bought up countless properties in their family hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. Amid the Antebellum architecture of the Old Southern aristocracy, the Navarros own some of the town’s most iconic sites, including the Charleston Hotel and the Union Pier.
What else does Ben Navarro own? The Charleston Open, the oldest professional women’s tennis cup in the country – and also where Emma made her WTA tour debut in 2019. Her father, who is often seen court side at Emma’s games (and not just because he owns the tournament) told Tennis Channel how proud he was of his daughter as she burst onto the court for the first time:
‘I’d be lying if I didn’t say I lost a couple nights sleep going up into the tournament because it’s the first time she had a chance to play on a stage like that, and you just don’t know,’ he said at the time. ‘I know if I had to do it I probably wouldn’t have been able to swing the racket.