MADRID \u2014 Victoria Mboko opens her clay season this week at the Madrid Open after having her wisdom teeth pulled, an ill-timed extraction that took her off the court ahead of the clay-court swing.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Canadian tennis star arrives in Spain ranked No. 10 in the world, up from No. 156 this time last year.<\/p>\n
Mboko will pair with Iva Jovic against Vera Zvonareva and Laura Siegemund in a round-of-32 doubles match on Wednesday, and will face the winner of Caty McNally and a qualifier \u2014 who meet Tuesday \u2014 in her opening singles match on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Mboko, from Burlington, Ont., had been scheduled to compete for Canada in the Billie Jean King Cup tie in Kazakhstan as a tune-up for Madrid, but underwent the dental procedure following last month’s Miami Open.<\/p>\n
“I got all four of mine taken out, and I knew the recovery was going to be pretty tough for me, so I decided not to play a lot of the tournaments,” Mboko said during media day in Madrid. <\/p>\n
“It was quite an experience,” she added. “I wouldn’t say it was very positive, but a lot of tears and a lot of soup, so it’s OK.”<\/p>\n
She said she needed several days to recover at home before travelling to Europe, and didn’t have much time to adjust to clay conditions.<\/p>\n
Mboko is 19-6 this season, with quarterfinal runs at Indian Wells and Miami earlier this spring, and has a first-round bye in singles despite limited clay experience. She played two tour-level clay events last season, reaching the second round in Rome and the third round at the French Open.<\/p>\n
“I’d say coming into this tournament, I don’t play a lot on clay, so maybe in my first couple of matches, especially in my first one, I want to get a feel for the court,” Mboko said. “I know there’s some altitude here, and the ball \u2014 it’s playing pretty fast for me at least. I guess it’s important to just adapt to the conditions and try to get my last few days of training and to prepare well for my first round.<\/p>\n
“So we’ll see how I react to it. Maybe I’ll like it. Maybe it’s not going to be in my favour, so we don’t know.”<\/p>\n
Other Canadians in singles at the Madrid Open include Leylah Annie Fernandez, F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime, Denis Shapovalov and Gabriel Diallo.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID \u2014 Victoria Mboko opens her clay season this week at the Madrid Open after having her wisdom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,84,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-619544","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-health","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619544","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=619544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}