Emma Navarro reveals long-running health struggles that caused anger on court

American Emma Navarro has detailed long-running health problems that led to significant weight loss, fatigue, dizziness and what she described as "deep internal anger" on court during 2023 and 2024, writing about the experience in a lengthy Instagram post.

Navarro, 25, is currently ranked 24th in the world and won the Strasbourg Open in May, her first title in more than a year; she was as high as eighth in 2024, the year she reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Open and Wimbledon and the last four at the US Open in New York.

Towards the end of 2025 Navarro was diagnosed with relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) and later with the autoimmune disorder Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, diagnoses she says contributed to her losing nine of her first 13 matches in 2026 and to withdrawing from the Charleston Open at the end of March. She wrote that she initially ignored problems that dogged her for three years because of the rapid success she was having: "Being new to professional tennis, I was doing what my team and I thought was best, and pushing myself to the limit was always my MO," she wrote.

Navarro said she lost about 14kg during 2023 and 2024 and described her breakthrough WTA Tour victory at the Hobart International as bittersweet, recounting a level of emotion on court she had not experienced before: "I was off. I was experiencing emotions I had never experienced before, at least not to this severity. Irritability, frustration, perfectionism, worry, and bizarrely for me, anger," she wrote. "I remember feeling deep internal anger on the court that week in Hobart, like I wanted to smash every racket in my bag (something I had never done or wanted to do)."

She says the problems extended beyond mood changes to physical and cognitive symptoms through 2025, listing "headaches, dizziness, brain fog, fatigue, anxiousness and mood swings," and that consultations with doctors, nutritionists and specialists led to the conclusion she had been under-fueling for almost the whole period.

Navarro confirmed she is altering her schedule while she recovers and will miss the Asian swing next season; she added: "I gained some weight this year. But I also gained my life back. I have enough energy to seize every day, to train or compete as hard as I want to, and to live a life outside of tennis."