Victoria Mboko and Felix Auger-Aliassime won their singles matches on Sunday to give Canada an unassailable 2-0 lead over China in their opening tie of the 2026 United Cup in Sydney.<\/p>\n
United Cup: Scores<\/a> | Standings<\/a><\/p>\n In the first singles rubber of the tie, Mboko came from a set down to beat China\u2019s Lin Zhu and give her country a 1-0 lead. Zhu, who had won the only previous meeting between the two players, made a quick start by winning the first four games. The 31-year-old held that early advantage to close out the opening set 6-2.<\/p>\n Mboko, who enjoyed a breakthrough 2025 season, climbing from outside the top 300 into the top 20, regrouped in the second set. The Canadian won the first four games and took the set 6-2 to force a decider.<\/p>\n The 19-year-old dominated the final set without dropping a game to seal a 2-6, 6-2, 6-0 victory in 1 hour, 39 minutes.<\/p>\n It was Mboko\u2019s sixth consecutive win on the WTA Tour after she ended 2025 on a five-match winning streak that earned her the second WTA Tour title of her season in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n In the second singles, Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime carried his strong 2025 form into the new season with a commanding 6-4, 6-4 win over Zhang Zhizhen\u00a0<\/p>\n The 25-year-old, at a career-high No. 5 in the PIF ATP Rankings scored his first opening victory of a season since 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cI can be very pleased with this first match of the year,\u201d said Auger-Aliassime. \u201cTennis is about rhythm, playing important points under pressure, so you never know what to expect. I woke up this morning hoping for the best, and then I played some of my best tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n Auger-Aliassime ended the 2025 season in fine form, highlighted by a semifinal run at the US Open, a title at the ATP 250 in Brussels and a last-four finish at the prestigious Nitto ATP Finals. He showed no signs of slowing down as he launched his 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n His serve proved especially decisive against Zhang, as he won 87% (33\/38) points behind his first delivery and saved the only break point he faced to level their Lexus ATP Head2Head series at 1-1.<\/p>\n Canada will next take on Belgium, and a victory in that tie will seal a quarterfinal spot for the Canadians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria Mboko and Felix Auger-Aliassime won their singles matches on Sunday to give Canada an unassailable 2-0 lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":{"0":"post-387270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387270","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=387270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}