Tennis can be a fickle sport. One moment, a player is on top of the world. The next, they’re stuck in a slump, unable to win for months. Then, without warning, their dominance returns, almost as if they simply remembered how good they are.
Right now, Victoria Mboko is in that final stage.
Tokyo: Scores | Draw | Order of play
The 19-year-old Canadian breezed past Eva Lys in under an hour Wednesday in Tokyo, winning 6-1, 6-1 to reach the Toray Pan Pacific Open quarterfinals. It’s the second WTA quarterfinal of her young career.
“I wanted to just be myself and try to play very aggressively,” Mboko said after the match. “I didn’t really have much of a game plan. I just wanted to play freely and just be very positive with myself on court. So, I think I checked all the marks today, and it all worked out at the end of the day.”
Mboko broke serve to open the match and won the first set in just 25 minutes, committing only two unforced errors and dropping just three points on serve. She backed it up with a near-identical second set, and the final numbers supported her post-match assessment.
1: It was nearly zero, only to be undone in the final game, but Mboko faced just one break point all match, saving it with ease. Lys never truly mounted a serious threat against her serve.
2: October 22 marked Mboko’s second win over Lys this season, her second straight victory overall and the day in which she reached her second career WTA quarterfinal.
5: Double bagels get the spotlight, but Mboko has quietly racked up five double breadsticks in her career. She’s made a habit of breaking spirits, not bread.
8: This is where I preface that these next two stats are impressive, but somehow less impressive than they could’ve been. Mboko lost just eight points on serve, but half of those came in the final game alone.
10: Ditto here. She finished with 10 unforced errors and 12 winners. Clean tennis, right? Of course. But the numbers were even cleaner before the last two games.
43: There’s no hiding Mboko’s dominance here, however. She’s won 43 matches in straight sets across all levels in 2025. Her ITF dominance has translated to the WTA tour, with two more straight set wins in Tokyo.
53: Look away, Lys. The match lasted just 53 minutes. For context: the delay caused by the preceding center court match between Linda Noskova and McCartney Kessler — won by Noskova in three sets — was longer than the time it took for Mboko to defeat Lys.
Mboko will now turn her attention to the winner of the second-round match between fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez and Elena Rybakina.
She is 1-1 this year against Rybakina, having lost in straight sets in Washington, D.C., in July before avenging the defeat the following week in the Canadian Open semifinals en route to winning the Montreal title.
She has yet to face Fernandez in her career.