US Open 2024 live updates: Day 7 latest with Coco Gauff losing in three sets to Emma Navarro

NEW YORK — Coco Gauff’s Grand Slam season is over.

For the second consecutive time in a major tournament, Emma Navarro used her increasingly dangerous combination of steadiness, speed and power to beat Gauff, knocking her out in the fourth round of the U.S. Open, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

Navarro, 23, born in New York and raised in South Carolina, is fast becoming a major force in tennis. She smothered the defending champion in front of Serena Williams, Stephen Colbert, Michael Che and nearly 24,000 fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium, by playing the match on technical terms with which Gauff could not live.

Navarro, who has shot up the rankings in the last year, became NCAA champion with the Virginia Cavaliers. Now she is the No. 13 seed at her home Grand Slam and rising still, her weaknesses falling away with each passing month.

This was always going to be a rough match-up for Gauff, not least because of the inevitable scar tissue from the loss at Wimbledon in July. Gauff entered that match as favorite, not just to beat Navarro, but to get to the final, with so many of the other top players having already fallen. Then Navarro appeared across the net, doing what she has done pretty much all year. She ran down ball after ball, extending rallies and simply refusing to miss, hanging in there long enough for Gauff’s Achilles heels — the instability of her forehand and of her serve — to let her down.

Read more about Navarro’s win here.