WTA Tour.<\/a> \u201cShe\u2019s such a talented player. It was such a difficult match for me, so to get through today was \u2026 I feel relieved a little bit.<\/p>\n\u201cShe has a lot of variety in her game, she\u2019s super aggressive and can hit a very heavy ball. Honestly, I just wanted to stand my ground as much as I possibly could. She hit some amazing shots, too, so I have to give her credit for that. But at the end of the day, I just wanted to hold it there as much as I could and fight really hard every point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mboko, the world No. 17, split a pair of singles matches at the United Cup team event last week. The 19-year-old is coming off a breakthrough year in which she won her first career tour-level events, including her dramatic triumph at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers in Montreal.<\/p>\n
Mboko will next face world No. 33 Anna Kalinskaya of Russia on Tuesday at the Australian Open tune-up event.<\/p>\n
Canada’s Leylah Fernandez faces No. 8 seed Diana Shnaider of Russia in the opening round on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
On the men’s side, Canada’s Gabriel Diallo faces qualifier Andrea Vavassori of Italy on Tuesday in the first round.<\/p>\n
Australian Open qualifying<\/p>\n
Marina Stakusic was the only one of four Canadians to win on Monday in the first round of Australian Open qualifying.<\/p>\n
The native of Mississauga, Ont., downed Nuria Parrizas Diaz of Spain 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Canada’s Cadence Brace, Kayla Cross and Alexis Galarneau all lost their openers.<\/p>\n
Canada’s Liam Draxl and Carson Branstine play first-round qualifying matches Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Players need to win three qualifying matches to be guaranteed entry into the main draw of the season’s first Grand Slam, which opens this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria Mboko is off to a winning start in her first traditional event of 2026. The Canadian, seeded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-404950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404950","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=404950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}