Emma Navarro Edges Lois Boisson in Tense US Open Opener

Emma Navarro held her nerve. Lois Boisson lost hers.

On a damp, disjointed opening to the 2026 US Open, Navarro edged a bruising three-setter 7-6, 6-7, 6-3 in New York, then watched as frustration boiled over on the other side of the net.

The match had already been through the wringer. It began on Sunday, only to be halted by rain and pushed into Monday, forcing both players to sleep on the tension of an unfinished contest. When they returned, every point carried the weight of the restart.

Navarro, 25 and playing on home soil, eventually found the clarity that the stop-start schedule had denied both women. She squeezed through a tight first-set tiebreak, was dragged into a second-set breaker and lost it, then reset once more to close out the decider 6-3.

“It was really tough stopping at the point of the match we were at,” Navarro said afterward. “I just felt like I had worked really hard to get to that point, and then all of a sudden, it’s like we’re gonna come out tomorrow and we both have a clean slate. It’s it’s really unique because you feel like you should feel like you’re ahead, but you kind of don’t.”

That mental reset defined the contest. Navarro embraced it. Boisson never quite did.

At 23, the French player had pushed the American deep into the New York night and then into the next day, trading heavy groundstrokes and long rallies across two tense days. By the time the final point landed in Navarro’s column on Monday, the emotional toll was clear.

They met at the net, shared the customary handshake, and Navarro lifted her arms to salute the crowd, a release as much as a celebration. Behind her, the cameras caught Boisson’s breaking point: racket driven into the hard court in a flash of anger, the sound cutting through the applause.

It was a raw, unfiltered moment, the kind that occasionally surfaces when a major asks for everything and still gives nothing back in return.

For Navarro, the win is a hard-earned passage into the second round and a foothold in a tournament that runs through September 13, with the women’s singles final set for September 12 and the men’s title decided a day later. For Boisson, it is a harsh early exit and a reminder of how thin the margins can be at Flushing Meadows.

The US Open has only just begun. The emotions are already running high.