HONG KONG \u2014 Victoria Mboko downed fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez in three sets to advance to the Hong Kong Open tennis tournament final.<\/p>\n
Toronto’s Mboko prevailed 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 over Fernandez of Laval, Que., in Saturday’s semifinal and the first meeting between the two Canadians.<\/p>\n
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The 19-year-old Mboko takes on Cristina Bucsa of Spain in Sunday’s final. Bucsa was a straight sets victor over fifth seed Maya Joint of Australia.<\/p>\n
Mboko beat Bucsa 6-3, 6-2 in their lone previous meeting earlier this year in the qualifying round of Rome.<\/p>\n
Third seed Mboko dispatched second seed Fernandez in one hour 44 minutes to reach her second WTA final this season.<\/p>\n
Fernandez had the upper hand early in the match in winning eight of the first nine games.<\/p>\n
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Fernandez hit 10 winners to Mboko’s five in the first set when the teenager made 14 unforced errors.<\/p>\n
The tide turned in the second set, however, when Fernandez leading 2-1 took a medical time out to have strapping applied to her right thigh.<\/p>\n
Mboko elevated her game after that. She made 34 of 40 first serves and didn’t concede serve again.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t really have the best start,” Mboko said afterward. “But I gotta give credit to her \u2014 she was playing really great, aggressive tennis, which made it hard for me to find my rhythm.<\/p>\n
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“I just wanted to stay in there as much as I could with her and find a way. It slowly got me a lot more confidence in my game, and I was more brave and able to go for my shots.”<\/p>\n
Mboko won a third of four matches in Hong Kong trailing after the first set.<\/p>\n
She appears to be back in form after a slump that followed her first WTA title at the National Bank Open in Montreal.<\/p>\n
Battling a wrist injury sustained in Montreal, she lost four matches in a row before reaching the quarterfinals of the Pan Pacific Open last week in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
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Mboko ended her losing streak in Tokyo against another countrywoman, Bianca Andreescu of Mississauga, Ont.<\/p>\n
Mboko is expected to debut in the world’s top 10 next week. She started the season at No. 333.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONG KONG \u2014 Victoria Mboko downed fellow Canadian Leylah Fernandez in three sets to advance to the Hong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[137989,31955,99,428,36053],"class_list":{"0":"post-266544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-cristina-bucsa","9":"tag-leylah-fernandez","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-victoria-mboko"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266544","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=266544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}