{"id":54334,"date":"2025-08-08T11:08:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T11:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/54334\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T11:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T11:08:06","slug":"victoria-mbokos-montreal-magic-the-canadian-teen-who-toppled-four-grand-slam-champions-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/54334\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Mboko\u2019s Montreal magic: the Canadian teen who toppled four grand slam champions | Tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada was still catching its collective breath from Summer McIntosh<\/a>\u2019s record-breaking swims when 18-year-old Victoria Mboko grabbed the spotlight at the National Bank Open and never let go.<\/p>\n

In front of a sold-out crowd in Montreal, the 85th-ranked Canadian wildcard finished her Cinderella title run on Thursday night by beating former world No 1 Naomi Osaka<\/a> 2-6, 6-4, 6-1 to win her first WTA Tour title. Prolonged cheers for Mboko interrupted play 30 minutes into the men\u2019s final<\/a> being played concurrently 330 miles west in her hometown of Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess the Canadian player won in Montreal,\u201d chair umpire Fergus Murphy explained to the confused players.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Mboko effect.<\/p>\n

With wins over four-time grand slam champion Osaka, reigning Roland Garros champion and world No 2 Coco Gauff, 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, and 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin, Mboko became just the third teen in the open era to oust four major champions at a WTA event. She\u2019s the youngest since Serena Williams<\/a> ran the table to win the 1999 US Open.<\/p>\n

If you find yourself in a \u201cfirst since\u201d or \u201cyoungest since\u201d Serena stat, you know you\u2019ve done something special.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my biggest takeaway is the sky\u2019s the limit,\u201d Mboko told the Guardian after the win. \u201cI never would have thought I would win a WTA 1000 so soon, that this would be my first WTA title, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mboko started the year ranked outside the top 300 and proceeded to win the first 20 matches she played, all in straight sets, and sweeping up five ITF titles in the first three months of the season. The bulk of her wins came at professional tennis\u2019 minor league equivalent, but that stretch of play showed what Mboko could do if she got on a roll.<\/p>\n

Maya Joint is a 19-year-old Australian who has already won two WTA titles in her breakout season. Along with Mboko and No 5 Mirra Andreeva, the trio are the only teenagers in the WTA\u2019s top 90.<\/p>\n

Victoria Mboko\u2019s dream run on home soil took Montreal by storm. Photograph: Minas Panagiotakis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning titles gives you a lot of confidence that you can do it,\u201d Joint told the Guardian, \u201cthat you can win that many matches in a row and stay focused for that long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mboko\u2019s game has proven to be a difficult Rubik\u2019s Cube to solve, even for the game\u2019s best. It is as intelligent as it is physical, a potent blend of power and discipline. She can overwhelm her opponents with power or use her speed and defense to trap them into errors. The choice, on any given day, is hers.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s very athletic,\u201d said top-seeded Gauff after Mboko handed her a 6-1, 6-4 exit in the round of 16. \u201cShe\u2019s a great ball striker, and she seems pretty positive out there on the court, doesn\u2019t get really too negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know her too well, but I\u2019ve gotten to talk to her a little bit over the course since Rome. I think she has a great support system around her, and I think that\u2019s important when you\u2019re young and on tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mboko\u2019s coach Nathalie Tauziat watched from the sidelines as her charge learned in real time how to compete and manage stress. So long as she kept her head, Tauziat told her, the talented teen was always in with a shot. Montreal proved to be her showcase. Her win over Osaka was her third come-from-behind win of the tournament. In the semi-finals, she saved a match point to stun No 3 seed Rybakina in a third-set tiebreak.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning of the year when I was winning a lot of matches and tournaments, I just had a lot of confidence in myself, to be honest,\u201d Mboko said. \u201cI don\u2019t know where that confidence came from, maybe it was just self-belief. I tried to carry that momentum as much as I possibly could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mboko\u2019s parents, Cyprien Mboko and Godee Kitadi, fled the Democratic Republic of Congo due to the political turmoil in 1999 and emigrated to the United States. Victoria was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, before the family relocated to Toronto. Her older siblings all played tennis, with her sister Gracia and brother Kevin being good enough to play at the collegiate level.<\/p>\n

She spent her summers running around the grounds at the National Bank Open chasing autographs and photos with her favorite players like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils. She even has a photo of herself at eight years old holding a replica of the trophy.<\/p>\n

Victoria Mboko celebrates after winning the second set over Elena Rybakina on Wednesday in the Montreal semi-finals. Photograph: Minas Panagiotakis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ten years on, she\u2019s no longer a pretender. Hours after the trophy ceremony, Mboko still couldn\u2019t believe she had her hands on the real thing. She will leave Montreal as one of the 25 best players on the WTA Tour, ranked at an astonishing No 24.<\/p>\n

When asked whether she feels like one of the 25 best players in the world, Mboko\u2019s humility kicked in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I could say yes to that, to be honest,\u201d she said. \u201cIt happens, and I honestly think everything\u2019s been happening so fast that I don\u2019t really have time to process it, let alone look at the rankings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like when I settle down a little bit and kind of realize what has just happened, so many things will change and I\u2019ll have a different perspective going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

That perspective now shifts to the US Open, a tournament that has been very good to the Canadians. In 2019, a 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu became Canada\u2019s first grand slam singles champion there. Two years later, Leylah Annie Fernandez stormed into the final. Could Mboko follow their well-worn path? She certainly isn\u2019t ruling it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started playing on the WTA Tour, I never thought in my head if I belonged or not because I just thought, a match is just a match,\u201d Mboko said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always knew everyone was really good, but I felt that at the end of the day, anything is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada was still catching its collective breath from Summer McIntosh\u2019s record-breaking swims when 18-year-old Victoria Mboko grabbed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-54334","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\/54334","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=54334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}