NEW YORK — American Emma Navarro reached her first Grand Slam semifinal by beating Spain’s Paula Badosa 6-2, 7-5 at the US Open on Tuesday.
Navarro, the No. 13 seed who had never even won a match in the main draw of her home major before this year, advanced to face No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka or seventh-seeded Qinwen Zheng in Thursday’s semis.
Navarro, who ousted defending champion Coco Gauff in the fourth round, ran through the first set in 29 minutes, but the No. 26-seeded Badosa opened a 5-1 lead in the second.
Navarro then took six straight games, winning 24 of the last 28 points, as Badosa’s game fell apart.
“After I got it back to 5-2 I kind of had a little bit of an inkling that it might be two sets and I just wanted to stay really tough and stick in there,” Navarro said in her on-court interview. “Even if I did lose the second set I wanted to kind of set the tone for the third set … just really happy with my performance today and crazy to be moving on to the semifinals.”
It’s been a career year for Navarro, who reached the third round or better at all four Grand Slams, including a fourth-round showing at Roland Garros and a quarterfinal appearance at Wimbledon. This after never having advanced beyond the second round of a major.
Navarro became the fifth woman in the past 30 years to reach a US Open semifinal after having never previously won a main draw match at the New York tournament. Each of the last two players to do this — Bianca Andreescu and Emma Raducanu — went on to win the title.
Navarro, who played two years at Virginia, is the third former women’s college player in the past 40 years to make the semifinals at Flushing Meadows, following Oklahoma State’s Lori McNeil in 1987 and UCLA’s Jennifer Brady in 2020.
Her victory ended an impressive summer season by Badosa, who entered Tuesday having won 24 of her last 30 matches since May’s tournament in Rome, highlighted by a WTA 500 title in Washington and a semifinal appearance in Cincinnati before her run in New York.
ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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