She began 2025 playing a small tournament in Martinique, France. Victoria Mboko, ranked No. 333 in the world, won all five of her matches and collected a then-grand total of $3,935.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t really hold that much expectation for myself,\u201d she told wtatennis.com\u00a0on Monday in Adelaide. \u201cMy goal honestly at the beginning was just to make the qualies of Grand Slams.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I kind of exceeded what I thought I would have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kind of.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Mboko vaulted into the quarterfinals of the Adelaide International with a rousing 6-2, 3-6, 7-6 (6) victory over Anna Kalinskaya. Mboko saved two match points in a thriller that went nearly two-and-a-half hours. She\u2019ll meet the winner of Wednesday\u2019s match between No. 2 seed and reigning Australian Open champion Madison Keys and qualifier Tereza Valentova.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s another impressive step forward for the 19-year-old Canadian.<\/p>\n
Not only did Mboko make the qualifying last year at Roland Garros, but she won two more matches in the main draw. She got through qualifying at Wimbledon, too, and won her opening match. By the time of the US Open, she was ranked inside the Top 25 and was seeded in the main draw.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a dazzling, vertiginous 10 months, Mboko won the WTA 1000 title in Montreal — in her home country — and was also the late-season champion in Hong Kong. Her year-end ranking was a not-to-be-believed No. 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mboko and 18-year-old Mirra Andreeva are the only teenagers in the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz Top 25.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s instructive that Mboko isn\u2019t dwelling on her breakthrough success but, rather, looking forward. In a candid, far-ranging conversation, she was thoughtful and displayed a remarkable maturity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always nice to go into your break on a high note,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that was pretty good for me mentally. I kind of forgot about it. It\u2019s in the past and I don\u2019t think carrying it on to other events is really relevant for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always see a new week as another opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mboko has followed an unusual path to the top of professional tennis. Her parents, Cyprien Mboko and mother Godee Kitadi left the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Victoria, the youngest of four siblings, was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. The family moved to Toronto when she was two months old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sister Grace and brother Kevin both played college tennis, and Victoria was already swinging a racquet at the age of four.<\/p>\n
The Montreal title featured startling wins over Grand Slam champions Sofia Kenin, Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina and, in the final, Naomi Osaka. That run, Mboko said, changed the way people, including herself, perceived her.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I wanted to win one or two rounds going into the tournament,\u201d Mboko said. \u201cBut having the support of the country and having the support of the fans really kept me really going. Honestly, I was having so much fun that those two weeks went by so fast. It came so quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started getting recognized a lot more on the streets or places like the grocery store. There\u2019s just so many more things that happen to me because I\u2019m at a different stage of my life — and I just have to get used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mboko focused her offseason workouts on gaining strength and building more stamina. All four of her matches this year have gone the distance, and she\u2019s won three of them, including a United Cup win over China\u2019s Zhu Lin and a 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 decision over Beatriz Haddad Maia in Adelaide\u2019s first round.<\/p>\n
She is acutely aware of the disparity in experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the time they are older than me,\u201d she said. “I feel like I always have to up my level of play and try to hang in there with the older girls and try to match their pace and strength. No matter how many points you have to defend, you can always make it up in any other week, so I don\u2019t really think much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mboko was named the WTA\u2019s Newcomer of the Year, joining a long tradition of early excellence. Here is just a partial list of previous winners: Tracy Austin (1977), Martina Hingis (1995), Venus and Serena Williams (1997 and 1998), Petra Kvitova (2010), Aryna Sabalenka (2018) and Mirra Andreeva (2023).<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like there\u2019s a history of the people who won that award, so that was real cool,\u201d she said. \u201cHaving that title or that platform really comes with a lot of responsibility, so it would be nice to maintain more consistency this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have pressure, then you\u2019re doing something right. And you\u2019re a player people want to play — and want to beat. So, I think it\u2019s important for me to just stay grounded and keep my head up no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She began 2025 playing a small tournament in Martinique, France. Victoria Mboko, ranked No. 333 in the world,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-693295","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","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115888230706781393","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}