American tennis player Emma Navarro has won the 2024 Hobart International, going up against Elise Mertens this afternoon.
The 22-year-old world number 31 won 6-1, 4-6, 7-5 in a three-set across 2 hours and 48 minutes in front of a record Hobart finals crowd of 2232.
In the process Navarro joined the likes of Kim Clijsters (2000), Petra Kvitova (2009), Garbine Muguruza (2014) and compatriot Sofia Kenin (2019) – who all went on to win Grand Slam titles – to win their first tour title in the Tasmanian capital.
“[I’m] just happy with how I finished it, especially on a forehand winner, a shot that I get in fights with sometimes, so pretty cool to finish it like that,” she said.
“I don’t know if I could put words to the emotions, but it’s been a lot of years in the making, I guess.”
“My coach and I, we’ve been together for eight years I think and from where we started, to now, is really crazy to think about.”
“Probably six, seven years ago, I was hoping to be a decent college player and that was going to be good enough for me. To be here now, it’s really crazy.”
The New York native said it will take a while for everything to sink on the honour roll she has now joined at the event.
It has been a big 12 months for Navarro, who has climbed from a ranking of 143 at the end of 2022 to now the cusp of the top 30.
“It’s crazy to think of my name in that list of players. I don’t know, I’m still kind of wrapping my head around, I guess, the ranking I’m at now and just the results i’ve been having,” she said.
“As a player you don’t always feel like you’re a top 30 player, even a top 100 player. There are days on the court where you feel like you can’t do anything right and you shouldn’t be ranked what you are or having the results that you’re having.”
The grandstand clash between the top two seeds capped a record breaking week for the tournament, with new crowd figures set on most days and the total attendance for the week (16,790) an all-time high since records have been counted, surpassing the previous mark by more than 2,000.
