He explained why he decided to speak out now, not saying anything publicly while he worked on it. “I’ve been generally private about this topic while I’ve been working to sort things out, but I think now is a good time to share what I’ve been going through, as well as my vision for the rest of the year.”
The diagnoses came without answers for a long time. “In the fall of 2025, after several years of struggling to figure out a complex and confusing array of symptoms, I was diagnosed with RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports), in which your body doesn’t get enough energy to meet the demands of physical activity and daily life,” he wrote. “This was further complicated by the diagnosis of Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism, which presented a difficult conundrum with energy intake, energy expenditure and medication.”
His reason for making it public, he said, was twofold. “both out of respect for my loyal followers who have stuck with me through the highs and lows of the past year, and also in the hope that it will resonate with at least a few people who may be facing a similar struggle.”
Being new to professional tennis, I did what I and my team thought was best, and pushing myself to the max was always my goal.
His account of how he got there begins in 2023, his first full season on tour and a workload he says is the heaviest in the sport. “I played 88 matches that year, the most of any professional tennis player. I split my time between the ITF Circuit and the WTA Tour, competing almost every week and training as much as I could during the off weeks,” she wrote. “Being new to professional tennis, I did what my team and I thought was best, and pushing myself to the max was always my goal.”
By the only criteria that applied at the time, it succeeded. “And it worked. I went from about 150 in the WTA rankings to almost 30 that year, winning four ITF titles and making deeper runs in tour events,” Navarro wrote. “I continued to push in the 2023 off-season, and then quickly found success in January of the following year. I made the semi-finals of my first event of 2024, the 250 in Auckland, and the following week I won the 250 in Hobart, shocking myself and my team. Then I made the third round of the Australian Open as my best finish in that grand slam.”
WTA Player of the Year
That season would end with her ranked No. 8 in the world and the WTA Player of the Year, finishing 2023 at No. 38 and 2022 at No. 143. According to him, the external image never coincides with the internal one.
“From the outside, everything was great. I continued to achieve tennis feats that exceeded my expectations, my ranking continued to rise, my level continued to improve, I continued to get faster and more athletic on the court, and I seemed to be the fittest, fittest version of myself that I had ever been,” she wrote. “But something was off. Or at least something was different. Different isn’t necessarily bad, I thought. Maybe things should be different. I think that’s what being a professional feels like.”
“But no one else was a fair explanation of what I was feeling. I was abandoned. I was experiencing emotions I had never felt before, at least not of this intensity. irritability, frustration, refinement, anxiety and, strangely enough for me, anger.”
Navarro, 25, has since added titles in Merida in 2025 and Strasbourg this year, reached the Nottingham final in June and exited the US Open with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 win over Jessica Pegula after defeating Karolina Muchova and Anna Kalinskaya along the way.