Being born into generational wealth can be even more lucrative than becoming a pro athlete, just ask rising tennis star Emma Navarro.
Multiple outlets have claimed the 23-year-old American professional tennis player is "worth more than [Roger] Federer, [Rafael] Nadal and [Novak] Djokovic put together", but they're really talking about her father's cash.
Born in New York, USA, to successful businessman Ben Navarro and his wife Kelly, Emma, who is playing Italy's Jasmine Paolini in the 2024 Wimbledon quarter final soon, was raised in comfort alongside her three siblings.
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Her father Ben began his career at Goldman Sachs in the 1980s, then climbed the corporate ladder at Citigroup, before leaving to start his own company, Sherman Financial Group in 1998.
Emma was born in 2001, just a few years before Ben bought a small bank and renamed it Credit One Bank in 2005, making himself even more money in the process.
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These days, the financial services company is one of the biggest in the US, with over 12 million cardholders across the States, and Ben is reported to be worth between US$1.5-$3 billion (approx. $2.2-$4.5 billion AUD). That's a huge sum Emma and her siblings are set to inherit one day.
Naturally, when Ben's daughters Emma and Maggie decided they wanted to play tennis, he had the cash to get them into the notoriously costly sport.
Emma, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, soon proved that she had plenty of talent.
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She played college tennis at the University of Virginia and made an international splash 2019, when she won the junior 2019 French Open in doubles with Chloe Beck.
She also finished runner-up in the junior singles draw, and she and Beck were runners-up in the junior Australian Open that year.
In the last five years, she's become a major player in the women's game, racking up 180 singles wins in her career to date and peaking at No. 20 in the world.
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Emma's biggest win came in 2024, when she defeated world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka in the quarterfinals at Indian Wells, after a third round finish at the 2024 Australian Open.
She's racked up plenty of personal wealth already in her short career, through prize money and lucrative sponsorship deals.
According to the Women's Tennis Association website, Emma has already won more than US$1,504,173 (over $2.2 million AUD) in prize money to date and has an estimated net worth of over $2 million AUD.
She's also sponsored by brands like FILA and Yonex, and financial company Credit One Bank. Sound familiar? That's because it's owned by her billionaire father.
Ben has taken a vested interest in his daughter's tennis career, as any proud father would, investing in her and the sport at large.
He owns the Live To Play Tennis Club in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, which hosts regular tournaments, and in 2018 he bought Charleston Tennis LLC.
That also made him the owner of the Credit One Charleston Open, the largest women's-only tennis event in North America.
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In 2022, he also bought the rights to the Western & Southern Open through his company Beemok Sports. It's a men's and women's singles tournament considered to be one of the top-tier events in the world.
But Emma doesn't look up to her father because of his savvy investments and business prowess; it's his mindset she really admires.
"I've got to give a lot of credit to my dad, he's probably the smartest guy I know and he's dropped a lot of knowledge and wisdom on my siblings and I over the years," she told Tennis Channel of her wealthy father in 2024.
"He's taught me a bunch about the perspective I want to take into things, especially on-court stuff."
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Outside of her tennis career, Emma studied Arts & Science at university and has over 30,000 followers on Instagram, where she pretty much exclusively posts about tennis.
"it's not my most comfortable position, being in the spotlight, but it's what I signed up for and what I've worked hard for over the years," she quipped to the Tennis Channel.
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