Emma Navarro kept her Navarro tennis surge going at Wimbledon, coming back after losing the first set to beat Oksana Selekhmeteva and reach the third round. It is the third consecutive year she has done that, and it adds another win to a run that now stands at eleven victories in the past few weeks.
Navarro Tennis at Wimbledon
She called the match against Selekhmeteva a tough one, saying the wind and the left-handed matchup made it hard to find her rhythm early. Navarro still found a way through, and the result extended a Wimbledon run that has become one of the most stable parts of her season.
"It was a very tough match with Oksana. Sometimes I need a bit of time to understand what's happening; sometimes a couple of games are enough, and other times a whole set is needed. That happened today. There was a lot of wind, and playing against a left-hander is never easy. It was hard for me to find my rhythm, but in the end, I managed to and could take the victory."
Two months at home
The bigger change came before she returned to the circuit. Navarro spent two months at home sorting some things out, then came back with a different approach: enjoy the court, enjoy the improvement, and stop treating every day like a grind. She said the day she decided she was ready to return was the point when everything shifted.
"I spent two months at home sorting some things out. The day I decided I was ready to return to the circuit was when everything changed. I came back with the idea of enjoying my time on the court, enjoying the process of improvement, and facing this challenge. Maybe the results took a while to come, but that was the real turning point."
Paula Badosa to Oksana Selekhmeteva
That reset did not produce instant results. Navarro said the wins took time to arrive after she came back, even as her mindset had already changed. The first sign of the new stretch came in her Wimbledon debut, when she also recovered from losing the opening set against Paula Badosa, and she has now followed that with another comeback against Selekhmeteva.
"I value days like this even more than those when everything goes perfectly. These matches force you to be strong, to endure, and to find solutions when you're not playing your best tennis and things are not going as expected. That's why I think victories like this are very special."
Navarro said she learned to value life outside tennis, a shift that came after two months living a more normal life at home. She said family, studies, and then tennis had always come first when she was young, and that the break made returning to competition more enjoyable.
She also said she and her coach have been together for ten years, with that long-running partnership still central to the work behind this rebound. For now, the scoreboard is doing the talking: three straight Wimbledon third rounds, eleven wins in the past few weeks, and another comeback that asks the next opponent to deal with a player who looks more settled than she did a few months ago.
