Victoria Mboko downed fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez in three sets to advance to the Hong Kong Open tennis tournament final.<\/p>\n
Toronto’s Mboko prevailed 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 over Fernandez of Laval, Que., in Saturday’s semifinal and the first meeting between the two Canadians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Mboko takes on Cristina Bucsa of Spain in Sunday’s final. Bucsa was a straight sets victor over fifth seed Maya Joint of Australia.<\/p>\n
Mboko beat Bucsa 6-3, 6-2 in their lone previous meeting earlier this year in the qualifying round of Rome.<\/p>\n
Third seed Mboko dispatched second seed Fernandez in one hour 44 minutes to reach her second WTA final this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fernandez had the upper hand early in the match in winning eight of the first nine games.<\/p>\n
Fernandez hit 10 winners to Mboko’s five in the first set when the teenager made 14 unforced errors.<\/p>\n
The tide turned in the second set, however, when Fernandez leading 2-1 took a medical time out to have strapping applied to her right thigh.<\/p>\n
Mboko elevated her game after that. She made 34 of 40 first serves and didn’t concede serve again.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t really have the best start,” Mboko said afterward. “But I gotta give credit to her \u2014 she was playing really great, aggressive tennis, which made it hard for me to find my rhythm.<\/p>\n
“I just wanted to stay in there as much as I could with her and find a way. It slowly got me a lot more confidence in my game, and I was more brave and able to go for my shots.”<\/p>\n
Mboko won a third of four matches in Hong Kong trailing after the first set.<\/p>\n
She appears to be back in form after a slump that followed her first WTA title at the National Bank Open in Montreal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Battling a wrist injury sustained in Montreal, she lost four matches in a row before reaching the quarterfinals of the Pan Pacific Open last week in Tokyo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mboko ended her losing streak in Tokyo against another countrywoman, Bianca Andreescu of Mississauga, Ont.<\/p>\n
Mboko is expected to debut in the world’s top 10 next week. She started the season at No. 333.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria Mboko downed fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez in three sets to advance to the Hong Kong Open tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-254934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}