This is why Emma Navarro won't ever wear a visor on the tennis court

Emma Navarro needed to dig deep during the heat of the day on Thursday in Charleston to reach the quarterfinals of her home tournament for the first time, turning around her Round of 16 match against her big-hitting American compatriot Ashlyn Krueger from a set and a break down.

Navarro slid, slipped and sprinted to defend against the 6-foot-1 Krueger's booming groundstrokes under the midday South Carolina sun, eventually using all the tools in her toolbox to befuddle the 20-year-old in two hours and eight minutes. But no matter how bright the natural light gets, Navarro told reporters afterwards that she will never wear a hat or visor on court—even if you'll often see her off-court accesorizing with her sponsor Red Bull's classic baseball cap.

There's a reason for that, the world No. 11 says, and it dates back to when she was playing high-school tennis (a rarity for touring pros) for Charleston's Ashley Hall varsity team.

"I used to wear a visor when I was really young, and then I switched over to a hat," she said after beating Krueger 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. "But when I was maybe 13 or 14, I stopped wearing anything, because I had this tan line. My forehead was super pale, and the rest of my face was really tan, and ... I was like, 'I can’t have this tan line.' So I stopped wearing anything and haven’t worn anything since. I’ve gotten pretty good at the squint, I guess."

The seventh time proved the charm for Navarro at the Credit One Charleston Open, who made her WTA main-draw debut at the tournament her father now owns as a wild card in 2019, and hasn't missed any of the tour events held in the city since.

While she says she's thought before about what it might be like to hold the trophy on Sunday "before, maybe not a ton this week," she says that despite her standing-room only practices, and fervent crowd support, her 2025 Charleston effort has been different in that she's trying to treat the tournament like every other event.

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"There’s just something about being at home, which is normally our comfort place," she told press ahead of facing Amanda Anisimova in an all-American quarterfinal. "It's the place we go when tournaments are over, and it's a place we can go to kind of de-stress and regroup and just feel the most comfortable and natural.

"So being home and then having a tournament at home in that normal place of comfort and relaxed quality is definitely weird. ... Definitely have to remind myself when I go to sleep at night, OK, I'm in a tournament. Like, gotta stay focused. Can’t totally relax."

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"I’m really trying to take it one match at a time and not get too far ahead of myself," she added, admitting she "made this week a little bit more than what it actually is."

"There’s lots of things on the court that I know I can do better and that I hope to do better with each consecutive round. So those are the kind of things that I’m putting a lot of my energy on."