NEW YORK \u2014 Rising tennis star Victoria Mboko will face two-time Grand Slam winner Barbora Krejcikova in the opening round of the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, fellow Canadians Leylah Fernandez and Felix Auger-Aliassime received favourable first-round matchups in Thursday’s draw for the final Grand Slam of the season.<\/p>\n
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Mboko, who turns 19 on Tuesday, enters the hardcourt major tournament as the top-ranked Canadian, seeded 22nd in the women\u2019s draw.<\/p>\n
The Toronto teen is coming off her first WTA tournament victory at the 1000-level National Bank Open in Montreal. She posted wins over top seed Coco Gauff, world No. 10 Elena Rybakina and four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka.<\/p>\n
She will likely get another stiff test from Krejcikova.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old from Czechia enters the U.S. Open with a world ranking of No. 61 and is not far removed from being one of the top players on the WTA Tour. She reached No. 2 in the world on Feb. 28, 2022 and her eight career titles includes wins at the 2021 French Open and Wimbledon in 2024.<\/p>\n
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Elsewhere, Fernandez and Auger-Aliassime will both face a qualifier in the first round.<\/p>\n
Fernandez, the runner-up at Flushing Meadows in 2021, is seeded 31st in the women’s draw and is enjoying a resurgent season that includes a win at the Citi Open last month in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime was a U.S. Open semifinalist in 2021, but was eliminated in the first round at the last two events. He has won two titles this year and is coming off a run to the quarterfinals earlier this month at the Masters-level Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
Denis Shapovalov, the men’s 27th seed from Richmond Hill, Ont., opens against Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics, while 31st seed Gabriel Diallo of Montreal takes on Damir Dzumhur of Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>\n
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Shapovalov, who is also having a bounce-back season with two titles in 2025, is looking to improve on his first-round exit at last year’s U.S. Open. He made the quarterfinals in 2020 as part of a six-year run of advancing to at least the third round.<\/p>\n
Shapovalov and Fucsovics have split four previous meetings, with the Canadian winning most recently at the Belgrade Open last year.<\/p>\n
Diallo advanced to the third round in his U.S. Open main-draw debut last year.<\/p>\n
The six-foot-eight 23-year-old, who posted his first career victory this year at the Libema Open in the Netherlands, is facing Dzumhur for the first time.<\/p>\n
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Vancouver’s Rebecca Marino got one step closer to a women’s main-draw berth Thursday with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-1 win over Japan’s Mai Hontama. Marino will play in the third and final round of qualifying on Friday.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Toronto’s Cadence Brace was ousted from second-round qualifying action with a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Slovenia’s Veronika Erjavec. Carol Zhao of Richmond Hill suffered the same fate with a 6-1, 6-4 defeat at the hands of Italy’s Lucrezia Stefanini.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 21, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Rising tennis star Victoria Mboko will face two-time Grand Slam winner Barbora Krejcikova in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[9660,37370,27189,15216,22621,22622,67544,31955,40312,99,428,59291,36053],"class_list":["post-101116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-barbora-krejcikova","tag-cincinnati-open","tag-citi-open","tag-damir-dzumhur","tag-denis-shapovalov","tag-felix-auger-aliassime","tag-grand-slam-winner","tag-leylah-fernandez","tag-national-bank-open","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-the-canadian-press","tag-victoria-mboko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}