Young star Victoria Mboko was beaten 6-4 7-5 by Karolina Muchova in the Qatar Open final.<\/p>\n
The victory is a first WTA 1000 title and her first since 2019, ending a seven-year drought for the 14th seed and former French Open finalist.<\/p>\n
Czech Muchova came through with the victory in one hour and 34 minutes in Doha as she picked up the second title of her career.<\/p>\n
It was a sweet moment for Muchova since she has struggled \u200cwith multiple injuries, most notably being sidelined for 10 months following a wrist injury she suffered in 2023.<\/p>\n
Twitter<\/p>\n
This content is provided by Twitter, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Twitter cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> “It’s been a while since I won a tournament,” Muchova said. “So it’s just nice to get that feeling again. To be reminded of that victory feeling here in Doha, it’s incredible.”<\/p>\n Muchova has picked up a remarkable 57 wins in WTA 1000 events before finally picking up a WTA 1000 title. Only three players have earned more WTA 1000 match wins before picking up a title.<\/p>\n It was close between the pair for the first six games before Muchova then took control and broke to move 4-3 ahead before serving out the first set 6-4.<\/p>\n She was then full of confidence in the second set and held all three break points but Mboko was not going to give up without a fight as she went 4-2 in front.<\/p>\n However, Muchova then broke back and after moving 6-5 in front served for the title.<\/p>\n On the way to the final, Mboko stunned Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina in the quarter-finals and she blasted past Latvian Ostapenko in 74 minutes to reach her second WTA 1000 final, following on from her dream run to the National Bank Open title in Montreal last August<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Who is Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko?\n <\/p>\n Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Congolese parents, but grew up in Toronto<\/p>\n Won her first professional singles title at the ITF W25 tournament in Saskatoon in 2022, which she successfully defended in 2023<\/p>\n Won four consecutive ITF World Tennis Tour events to begin 2025, adding a fifth in March. In second place for most ITF World Tennis Tour women’s singles titles won in 2025<\/p>\n Began 2025 ranked at No 333, but now projected to be inside top 10 when the rankings are updated on Monday<\/p>\n Qualified for her first Grand Slam main draw at the French Open, where she reached the third round<\/p>\n Coached by former world No 3 and 1998 Wimbledon finalist Nathalie Tauziat and Noelle van Lottum<\/p>\n \n Mboko’s INCREDIBLE ranking rise \u2b50\n <\/p>\n Jan 2025: No 333<\/p>\n Feb 2025: No 211 \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n Mar 2025: No 156 \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n May 2025: No 120 \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n June 2025: Top 100 debut \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n July 2025: No 88 \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n Aug 2025: No 24 \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n Jan 2026: No 13 \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n Feb 2026: Top 10 debut \u261d\ufe0f<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Muchova had defeated Maria Sakkari 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 in the other semi-final.<\/p>\n This time last year, Mboko was ranked No 211 and on the way to collecting her fourth ITF title of 2025 at the Manchester W35.<\/p>\n She had played just one WTA main draw in her career, and had yet to win a match at that level.<\/p>\n “It \u2060was amazing. It’s not the \u200boutcome I wanted but I think \u200bthere’s so many positives to take away,” Mboko said.<\/p>\n Watch the ATP and WTA Tours, live on Sky Sports or stream with NOW<\/a> and the Sky Sports app<\/a>, giving Sky Sports customers access to over 50 per cent more live sport this year at no extra cost. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Young star Victoria Mboko was beaten 6-4 7-5 by Karolina Muchova in the Qatar Open final. The victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-475141","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\/475141","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=475141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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