American tennis star has made it to the quarter-finals for the first time.

Navarro has previously reached the semi-finals of the and quarter-finals of . However, many fans might be unaware that Navarro is of a famous lineage and is actually the offspring of a billionaire business tycoon.

Now, no. 8 is set to go head-to-head with the top-ranked women's player in the world, on Wednesday (January 22). Her skills with the racket have often been overlooked, and her career to date has been a hotbed of near misses and controversy.

So, before Navarro steps onto the court for one of the most significant matches of her career so far, let's delve into her family's staggering wealth and the fallout from some of her spiky remarks.

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Emma's dad Ben Navarro is a billionaire businessman at the helm of Credit One Bank. He has snapped up a substantial amount of properties in their family hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, including some of the town's most iconic sites, reports .

Such is his wealth; he also owns two tennis tournaments, The Charleston Open, the oldest professional women's tennis cup in the country, and Cincinnati's Western and Southern open, which cost him nearly £240 million.

Her grandfather, Frank Navarro, was an American football star who posed for the famous US artist Norman Rockwell’s painting The Recruit. Her sister, Meggie, is following in Emma’s footsteps and hopes to make it to the tennis world.

It's estimated that Ben boasts a net worth of around £1.2billion ($1.5billion). To put her family's mind-boggling earnings into perspective, Navarro's fortune dwarfs that of tennis legends such as Roger Federer (£434m), Rafael Nadal (£174m) and Novak Djokovic (£189m).

Navarro is also poised to inherit her parents' empire, reported to be worth around £3bn, according to

Navarro sparked a bit of a stir at the 2024 U. S Open when she expressed gratitude to her father for steering her away from a conventional "9-5" job, a comment that didn't sit well with some fans. "I wanna also thank my dad," she said during the U.S major.

"I think he saw a vision from the time I was really young. He knew maybe I was a bit ADHD or something to be sitting in a classroom or a 9 to 5. He saw something in me from a young age. So thanks Dad for sending me on this journey."

One social media user responded critically, saying: "Her dad is a BILLIONAIRE let's not act like it was a hardship to send her to boarding school where she could play tennis", while another sarcastically commented: "Thank you papa for using your millions and billions of dollars on me your poor middle-class daughter."

After securing her place in the Australian Open quarter-finals, the American confidently insisted on her day that her game can be as good as anyone following her victory over Russian competitor Daria Kasatkina. "My tennis can be alpha, and I'll let that do its job while I can just be me," she said post-match.

Navarro is set to take on Swiatek for a place in the semi-final and a guaranteed £890k cheque. However, Swiatek is coming off a strong win against in the fourth round and will face Navarro, who has been pushed to three sets in every match of the tournament thus far.

Zheng rallied from a set down to beat Navarro at the Paris Olympic Games last summer. However, after the match, controversy reigned.

Speaking later on Navarro claimed that Zheng "goes about things in a pretty cut-throat way." She added: ["I just told her I didn't respect her as a competitor. It's tough to face an opponent like that, who I really don't respect."

Navarro was criticised for her strong comments but later added at the US Open last year that she felt "disrespected" by Zheng and that their history goes back to their days on the junior courts together.