Emma Navarro reveals three-year health battle behind slump and Strasbourg comeback
Emma Navarro has revealed a three-year struggle with serious health problems that left her exhausted, dizzy and angry on court.
The 25-year-old American, currently ranked 24th in the world, set out the details in a lengthy Instagram post, BBC. She said she ignored symptoms that dogged her for three seasons. That silence cost her.
Navarro said she lost about 14kg during 2023 and 2024. The weight loss brought fatigue and dizziness. On court it surfaced as "deep internal anger". She kept playing.
That period covered the best tennis of her life. She won her breakthrough WTA Tour title in Hobart. In 2024 she climbed to a career-high eighth in the rankings, reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Open and Wimbledon and made the semi-finals at the US Open.
But through 2025 she struggled with headaches, dizziness, brain fog, fatigue, anxiousness and mood swings. Towards the end of that year she was diagnosed with relative energy deficiency in sport, known as RED-S, a condition where the body does not get enough energy to support both training and basic health. She was then diagnosed with Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, an autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks the thyroid gland and slows it down.
After meetings with doctors, nutritionists and specialists, Navarro said she realised she had been under-fuelling for almost the entire period.
The start of 2026 showed the strain. She lost nine of her first 13 matches. She withdrew from the Charleston Open at the end of March and did not compete from mid-March to early May because of illness.
She returned in Strasbourg with a 4-9 record for the season after a month-long break for health struggles, WTA Tennis. She won the title in May. It was her first trophy in more than a year.
Navarro said she has gained some weight this year and gained her life back. She now has enough energy to train, compete and live a life outside tennis. She will miss the Asian swing, the run of tournaments in China and Japan that closes the season, to focus on recovery for next year.
For fans, this puts a difficult year in a new light. Navarro reached the US Open quarter-finals in September with a 6-4 6-2 win over Anna Kalinskaya at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Reuters. That run came shortly after she faced online mockery about her body, with hypothyroidism known for causing moderate weight gain, Yahoo Sports. Context changes everything. The scoreline stayed the same. The story behind it did not.
