Emma Navarro beats defending Wimbledon champ Barbora Krejcikova. There will be a first-time winner
Sending an ill and dizzy Krejcikova home in the third round, the 10th-seeded Navarro extended a recent run of one-and-done winners at the All England Club and assured the grass-court major of yet another first-time women's champion.
"Something I take a lot of pride in is being tough and fighting till the last point, no matter what the circumstances are. It's something I always try to do," said Navarro, who was born in New York, grew up in South Carolina and won the 2021 NCAA championship for the University of Virginia. "I could never live with myself if I ever gave up. It's just not in my nature. I don't think it's in any of my family members' nature to ever give up on anything. I guess we're a stubborn bunch."
Krejcikova faded in the third set, getting her blood pressure checked at the changeover after Navarro broke her to lead 3-2 at No. 1 Court. Krejcikova ate a banana and drank liquids during the medical timeout, while Navarro walked to her guest box and spoke to her coach during the break in action.
When play resumed, Krejcikova showed clear signs of being in distress, often leaning over and placing her hands on her knees between points.
"I was actually feeling worse and worse," said Krejcikova, who was seeded 17th but now will tumble out of the top 70 in the WTA rankings. "It's very sad for me and very unfortunate."
This is hardly Navarro's first big win on a big stage. Last year, she eliminated Coco Gauff at Wimbledon to reach her first major quarterfinal. Then, in a rematch a couple of months later, Navarro won again at the U.S. Open -- where Gauff was the 2023 champion -- en route to her debut in a Slam semifinal.
Whoever ends up winning the Wimbledon women's title on July 12 will be the ninth champion in the past nine editions of the grass-court Grand Slam tournament. Serena Williams was the last repeat champ in 2016.
The trophy-takers since then have been Garbine Muguruza in 2017, Angelique Kerber in 2018, Simona Halep in 2019, Ash Barty in 2021 -- all of whom are now retired -- Elena Rybakina in 2022, Marketa Vondrousova in 2023 and then Krejcikova (the tournament was canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19).
Rybakina lost Saturday; Vondrousova exited in the second round.
Against Krejcikova, Navarro was down a set and a break at 2-1 in the second before turning things around.
"I kind of regrouped a little, tried to slow things down a bit from my side and make her look at some different shots," said Navarro, 24, who will meet No. 7 Mirra Andreeva, an 18-year-old Russian, on Monday for a quarterfinal berth. "Kind of just try to make her as uncomfortable as I could."
Most points were decided by what Krejcikova did. That's how she ended up with 34 winners -- 21 more than Navarro -- and 53 unforced errors. Remarkably, Navarro finished with just 11 unforced errors.
Last year's triumph was the second at a major tournament for Krejcikova, who also won the 2021 French Open.
It has been a fortnight filled with surprises, and Navarro is one of four top-10 seeds left in the women's bracket. The others are No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, who won her third-round match Friday against Emma Raducanu, Andreeva and No. 8 Iga Swiatek, a 6-2, 6-3 winner against Danielle Collins on Saturday.
"My slice is coming along pretty nicely. I'm able to use that to my advantage," Navarro said. "Played scrappy at times. Played tough. Hit some good groundstrokes, as well. I feel pretty good about where I'm at."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Today
37 minutes ago
- Japan Today
Alcaraz's Wimbledon win streak reaches 18; Sabalenka gets to another Slam quarterfinal
tennis By HOWARD FENDRICH Carlos Alcaraz's latest up-and-down Wimbledon performance began with a dropped set. Later Sunday, he was in danger of getting broken to fall further behind in the third. And then, as he so often does, Alcaraz seized the moment, produced some magic and moved closer to a third consecutive title at the All England Club. Alcaraz stretched his winning streak in the grass-court Grand Slam tournament to 18 matches — and his current unbeaten run across all events to 22 — by coming back to beat No. 14 seed Andrey Rublev 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 at Centre Court to return to the quarterfinals. In this fortnight's first matchup between two men ranked in the top 20, No. 2 Alcaraz brought out his best while down 3-2 in the third set. First, he needed to fend off a break chance for Rublev, doing so with a forehand passing winner. After eventually holding to 3-all, Alcaraz earned his own break opportunity and didn't let Rublev escape. On an eight-stroke exchange, Alcaraz sprinted from one corner of the court to the other and, with a stomp of his right foot and a bit of a slide, he flicked a cross-court forehand winner. Oh, did he relish that one. Alcaraz spread his arms wide, pointed to his right ear and basked in the crowd's loud adulation, the noise bouncing off the underside of the stadium's closed roof. Rublev sat in his sideline chair, looked up at his guest box and made a sarcastic 'OK' hand signal. Just 10 minutes later, that set belong to Alcaraz, who will face 2022 semifinalist Cam Norrie — the last British player in singles — on Tuesday for a berth in the final four. 'I always said that it's just about belief in yourself. It doesn't matter that you are one-set-to-love down,' Alcaraz said. 'Tennis is a sport that can change in just one point. One point can change the match completely, turn around everything.' The 61st-ranked Norrie, who played college tennis at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, advanced with a 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (7), 6-7 (5), 6-3 win over qualifier Nicolas Jarry, who hit 46 aces. Norrie had a chance to close things out much earlier than he did but failed to convert a match point while ahead 6-5 in the third-set tiebreaker. The other men's quarterfinal Tuesday will be No. 5 Taylor Fritz vs. No. 17 Karen Khachanov. Fritz, last year's U.S. Open runner-up, had a short day because his opponent, Jordan Thompson, quit after about 40 minutes with back and leg injuries that he'd been dealing with throughout the tournament. Alcaraz is just 22 and already owns five Grand Slam trophies, the latest arriving in June at the French Open. He hasn't lost a match anywhere since April 20 against Holger Rune in the final at Barcelona. There have been lapses, of course, including when Alcaraz fell behind by two sets against No. 1 Jannik Sinner in the final at Roland-Garros. Or when the Spaniard lost four points in a row after going up 5-3 in the opening tiebreaker against Rublev. He hasn't been as close-to-perfect as others over the past week: Sinner, No. 10 Ben Shelton and No. 22 Flavio Cobolli haven't dropped a set heading into their fourth-round contests. So, sure, Alcaraz has ceded five sets already, but all that matters is that he hasn't lost a match. No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka reached the quarterfinals at her 11th consecutive Grand Slam tournament, defeating No. 24 Elise Mertens 6-4, 7-6 (4), and will play unseeded Laura Siegemund, the 37-year-old German who followed up her elimination of Australian Open champ Madison Keys by beating lucky loser Solana Sierra 6-3, 6-2. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova overcame a missed call late in the first set — when the electronic system accidentally was off — and beat Sonay Kartal 7-6 (3), 6-4 to return to the grass-court major's quarterfinals for the first time in nine years. Pavlyuchenkova's opponent Tuesday will be Amanda Anisimova or Linda Noskova. Monday's fourth-rounders include Novak Djokovic against No. 11 Alex de Minaur at 1:30 p.m. They were supposed to face each other in last year's quarterfinals at Wimbledon, but de Minaur was forced to withdraw with a hip injury. That'll be followed at Centre Court by Mirra Andreeva vs. Emma Navarro, and then Sinner vs. No. 19 Grigor Dimitrov. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Mainichi
18 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Where did Japan's Hanshin Tigers emblem come from? Icon gives glimpse into team's history
OSAKA -- The year 2025 marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of Japan's Hanshin Tigers. While the professional baseball team's tiger emblem is well-known, it's less commonly known that the Tigers' first ace pitcher and a designer employed by Hanshin Electric Railway Co. teamed up to produce it. The tiger emblem was already appearing on posters as early as the year following the squad's founding in 1935. The Mainichi Shimbun took a closer look at the team's history from the perspective of the logo's iconic design. Inspiration from alma mater of first pitching ace "Before the word 'brand' became established in Japan, the Tigers had already branded their tiger emblem and logo, and it's been loved by fans for 90 years," says Masaki Omori, 58, a railway designer from the Hyogo Prefecture city of Ashiya in western Japan. According to Omori, the birth of the tiger emblem can be traced back to Tadashi Wakabayashi (1908-1965), the team's first ace. The team was founded in December 1935 as the Osaka Baseball Club. When the Osaka Tigers was chosen as the team's name, Wakabayashi, a Hawaiian-born "nisei," or child of Japanese-born immigrants, recalled that his alma mater, President William McKinley High School, had a sports team also called the "Tigers" with a tiger emblem. He accordingly proposed adopting a tiger emblem for the Osaka team, Omori says. One of Wakabayashi's high school classmates, Susumu Hoshina (1906-2000), who went on to become the first coach of Hosei University's American football team, drew the initial draft, which was then incorporated into a design by Genichi Hayakawa (1906-1976), a designer at Hanshin Electric Railway. Omori praised the design, saying, "The shape of the eyes and fangs are drawn accurately, the balance of the stripes is just right and it's superb." Hanshin's beautiful baseball tickets The 1936 poster "The Osaka Tigers are Coming" (held by the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum), designed by Hayakawa, already featured the tiger emblem. The following year's admission ticket marking one year since the team's founding was beautifully colored with a red circle containing the tiger emblem against a base of yellow and black stripes. "Printing technology was underdeveloped at the time, and I think multicolor printing was likely expensive, but the Tigers continued to produce beautiful tickets from the start," Omori recalls. Shigeyuki Yamagishi, 51, a company worker in Nagoya who has collected tens of thousands of baseball tickets dating from before World War II to the present, also praises the tickets, saying, "In the era before the war, when most tickets only had text, those adorned with the tiger emblem and the 'TIGERS' logo were by far the coolest." Attention to striped uniform detail Hayakawa, who hails from Tokyo, studied design at Kyoto Craft High School (the present-day Kyoto Institute of Technology), and went on to enter Hanshin Electric Railway Co. Materials relating to Hayakawa are retained at Osaka company Shiura Sports Yohin Co., which supplied uniforms to the Tigers in the 1950s. Including the word "OSAKA" that decorated the chests of the uniforms, Hayakawa paid attention to details that would typically be outsourced to manufacturers today. This included hand-drawing the stripes one by one to make samples to show the difference in width. The team's name changed to the current "Hanshin Tigers" in 1961. Even after retiring in 1958, Hayakawa continued to work with the team, designing the cover for "Tigers 30-year history" in 1965 and a Hanshin Department Store poster featuring pitcher Yutaka Enatsu in the 1970s. Original strength from yellow and black Incidentally, it was in 1953 that the Yomiuri Giants, founded in 1934, adopted orange as their team color, while the Hiroshima Carp, founded in 1950, chose red in 1975. The "raging bull" emblem of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes (1949-2004) was designed by renowned Japanese artist Taro Okamoto but has faded from view since the team's merger with Orix. Omori reflects, "I think the raging bull emblem is a wonderful work of art, but I got a keen sense of how difficult it is for designs to endure, no matter how good they are." In the 2000s, it became more common for teams to wear not only home and away uniforms but also revived designs and ones with different color schemes. Since 2013, the Hanshin Tigers, too, have adopted different uniform designs each year under the theme "Urutora (Ultra) Summer" -- a play on words incorporating the Japanese word "tora" for "tiger." Even when a green-themed uniform was introduced, the yellow and black tiger emblem on the sleeve ensured that the "Tigers' identity" was not lost. Omori, a Hanshin fan from Tokyo, fell in love with the design of the yellow and black baseball cap as an elementary school student. Having designed train cars for JR West, he found a connection with Hayakawa, who also worked as a designer for a railway company, and has made researching Hayakawa his life's work. For 90 years, the tiger emblem has continued to be loved by fans. "I feel the original strength anew," Omori says, expressing respect for Hayakawa. (Japanese original by Mayu Maemoto, Osaka City News Department) Exhibition underway in Hyogo Pref. The Otani Memorial Art Museum in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, is currently hosting an exhibition titled " Baseball and Design: Tracing the Hanshin Tigers Through Design." The exhibition features posters by Hayakawa, along with many caricatures and other items from teams other than Hanshin, including a caricature of famed Giants player Shigeo Nagashima, who passed away in June. Yamagishi's ticket collection and Omori's collection of historical Hanshin baseball caps are also being displayed. The exhibition runs through July 27, and is closed on Wednesdays, with general admission costing 1,200 yen (about $8). For more information, phone the museum on 0798-33-0164 (in Japanese).
Japan Times
21 hours ago
- Japan Times
Tearful defending champion Krejcikova knocked out of Wimbledon
Barbora Krejcikova's reign as Wimbledon champion came to a tearful end on Saturday as the Czech slumped to a 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 defeat against American 10th seed Emma Navarro. Krejcikova appeared to be struggling with injury in the closing stages and wept at No. 1 Court as Navarro took advantage to cause the latest upset in the women's tournament following the exits of five of the top six seeds. The 29-year-old had to fight back from a set down to beat rising star Alexandra Eala in the first round before another tense three-set win over Caroline Dolehide in the second round. There would be no dramatic escape for Krejcikova this time, with the 17th seed's fitness problems finally catching up with her. "I was definitely enjoying myself and I was feeling quite well. Suddenly out of nowhere I just lost all my energy and I couldn't really gain it back," Krejcikova said. "First of all, I thought that it was the food, that I ate too early. That's why I started with all the bananas and all the sugars and stuff inside. "But I wasn't really feeling better, I was actually feeling worse and worse with time. It's very sad for me and very unfortunate." Navarro added: "It was really tough out here today. Probably neither of us played our best tennis. I know she was dealing with some injuries at times." Krejcikova arrived at Wimbledon with just six matches under her belt in an injury-ravaged 2025. The two-time Grand Slam champion has endured a difficult time since defeating Italy's Jasmine Paolini in the Wimbledon final last year. She was out of action until May after suffering a back injury and lost in the second round of the French Open. Emma Navarro plays a backhand return to Barbora Krejcikova during their third-round match at Wimbledon on Saturday. | AFP-JIJI Krejcikova also pulled out of the recent Eastbourne Open before the quarterfinals with a thigh problem. The world No. 16 had relished being back on the hallowed turf of the All England Club, describing her first-round match on Centre Court as like "playing in the temple of tennis." Initially it seemed she would be equally inspired on No. 1 Court as Krejcikova strolled through the first set. But the Czech lost her rhythm in the second set and Navarro pounced to level the match. Krejcikova took a lengthy spell off-court to compose herself before the decider, but she quickly squandered five break points and then dropped her own serve in the third game. Leaning on her racquet with a concerned grimace after another unforced error, Krejcikova looked less than fully fit. She managed to break in the next game but Navarro immediately regained the lead with another break, prompting Krejcikova to call for a medical timeout that included having her blood pressure checked. Constantly bending over in obvious discomfort, Krejcikova's Wimbledon reign was coming to a painful end. Even a break back for the Czech couldn't lift her and Navarro delivered the knockout blow, before serving out the victory as Krejcikova left the court struggling to hold back tears.
