DOHA \u2014 It\u2019s off to the semifinals at the Qatar Open tennis tournament for Canadian tennis star Victoria Mboko following yet another upset victory.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old from Toronto earned a 7-5, 4-6, 6-4 quarterfinal win Thursday over second-seeded Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, the 2026 Australian Open champion. The 10th-seeded Mboko had reached the quarterfinals by upsetting fifth seed Mirra Andreeva 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (5) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Canadian won Thursday in dramatic fashion, sealing the match with her sixth service break. After Mboko jumped out to a 40-0 lead in the 10th game, Rybakina fought back to deuce, but Mboko took the next two points to complete the stunning upset.<\/p>\n
Mboko finished 6-of-12 in break attempts while Rybakina was 5-of-9. Rybakina fired 11 aces in the match, compared to six for the Canadian.<\/p>\n
Three service breaks powered Mboko\u2019s opening-set win. Rybakina moved ahead 5-3 with a break and a hold, but Mboko held serve and then broke again to level the set at 5-5.<\/p>\n
The Canadian clinched the set with her third break despite having fewer aces (two, compared to four for Rybakina) and a double-fault (Rybakina had none). Rybakina also registered two first-set service breaks of her own.<\/p>\n
Rybakina broke for the third time in the opening game of the second set and held for a 3-1 lead. Mboko answered with her fourth break to pull even at 3-3, but Rybakina broke again for 4-3 and served out the set 6-4 to force a deciding set.<\/p>\n
Mboko improved her record to 12-3 this season. She\u2019s coming off a breakout 2025 campaign in which she won two titles, including a WTA 1000-level crown at the National Bank Open in Montreal.<\/p>\n
She entered the Qatar Open with a career-high ranking of 13th and is projected to move into the top 10 following Thursday\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOHA \u2014 It\u2019s off to the semifinals at the Qatar Open tennis tournament for Canadian tennis star Victoria…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-471390","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\/471390","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=471390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}