By Steve Sutcliffe, BBC Sport journalist.
Photo Credit: Getty Images.
American Emma Navarro says she has gained her “life back” after opening up on long-running health problems that caused significant weight loss, fatigue, dizziness and left her “feeling deep internal anger” on the court.
Navarro, who claimed her first title in more than a year at the Strasbourg Open in May, is currently ranked 24th in the world.
The 25-year-old was as high as eighth in 2024, the year she reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Open and Wimbledon, and the last four at the US Open in her native New York.
But towards the end of 2025 she was diagnosed with relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) and subsequently found out she was suffering with the autoimmune disorder Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism.
Those issues contributed to her losing nine of her first 13 matches in 2026 and withdrawing from the Charleston Open at the end of March.
She says she initially ignored problems that dogged her for three years due to exceeding her expectations on the court.
“Being new to professional tennis, I was doing what my team and I thought was best, and pushing myself to the limit was always my MO,” she wrote in a lengthy post on Instagram.
“And it worked. From the outside, things looked great. I continued to achieve tennis milestones that far exceeded my expectations, my ranking was rising, my level continued to improve, I continued to get faster and more athletic on the court, and I looked to be the strongest, fittest version of myself I had ever been.”
Yet the warning signs were there. She lost about 14kg in weight during 2023 and 2024, and her breakthrough WTA Tour victory at the Hobart International, Australia proved a bittersweet moment.
“I was off. I was experiencing emotions I had never experienced before, at least not to this severity. Irritability, frustration, perfectionism, worry, and bizarrely for me, anger,” she added.
“I remember feeling deep internal anger on the court that week in Hobart, like I wanted to smash every racket in my bag (something I had never done or wanted to do).
“Everything began to annoy me. My team, other people, anything that didn’t align with my specific preferences or routines, any imperfection on the court, every mistake, every point I lost. But I tried my hardest to not let people see how I felt, to keep it together. Additionally, I was hungry. Every hour of the day, I was hungry.”
Navarro, went on to explain how she had struggled with “headaches, dizziness, brain fog, fatigue, anxiousness and mood swings” through 2025, before meeting with doctors and nutritionists and various specialists, and realising she had been under-fueling for almost the entire period.
While she is missing the Asian swing as part of her recovery for next season, she added: “I gained some weight this year. But I also gained my life back. I have enough energy to seize every day, to train or compete as hard as I want to, and to live a life outside of tennis.”