MONTREAL — This is no teenage dream. What Victoria Mboko is doing is a wonderful reality for Canadian tennis fans.
The 18-year-old recorded the biggest win of her rapidly rising career before a screaming sellout crowd here on Saturday, crushing top seed Coco Gauff 6-1, 6-4 in the round of 16 at the National Bank Open presented by Rogers.
Mboko finished off the world No. 2 in 62 minutes, dropping her racket and putting her hands over her face as Gauff put the final shot into the net to give the Canadian the decisive break for the win.
Ranked outside the top 300 entering the year, Mboko is now projected to rise to at least No. 55 next week. And who’s to say it stops there. She was far better than Gauff and she’s into the quarterfinals at a WTA 1000 in just her seventh tour-level main draw.
The Montreal crowd belted out ‘Ole, Ole, Ole’ after the match in an absolutely electric scene on Centre Court.
Badly outplayed in the first set, Gauff seemed to find some life midway through the second set. She had three break-point chances with the set locked at 3-3, but couldn’t convert on any of them. While Gauff had some good returns in the game, she made too many unforced errors as rallies went on.
Of course, it’s not easy to avoid unforced errors when playing a relentless Mboko. Her power regularly puts opponents on their back foot, making it harder to stay in rallies.
Once again, Gauff had chances in the next service game with Mboko double-faulting twice. But the Canadian always had answers. A service winner and a punishing groundstroke followed the double-faults, getting her out of danger.
Mboko needed just 25 minutes to win a one-sided first set.
Gauff, who had 37 double-faults in her first two matches here, continued to struggle badly with her serve. She double faulted once in three of her service games, including in the opener en route to a Mboko break, getting the crowd into it right off the hop.
With the Canadian pounding away, Gauff had no answers, putting far too many shots into the net.
As has been the case throughout the tournament, Mboko escaped any hints of trouble with her big serve. Mboko fought off Gauff’s only break-point chance in the first set with a service winner and then notched the next two points for a 2-1 lead.
With the day session running long, the lineup outside the stadium was massive with fans eagerly anticipating the Saturday night showdown. “Let’s go Vicky” chants were loud and proud throughout the match.
Mboko currently is entered in the qualifying draw for next week’s Cincinnati Open, though the tournament still does have some wild-cards to give out. Her ranking was not high enough at cut-off to get her in the main draw for the second WTA 1000 event on the summer hard-court circuit.
However, she was high enough to get a spot in the main draw for the U.S. Open later this month. Mboko had to qualify for the French Open and got into Wimbledon as a lucky loser after dropping a qualifying match.
