Toronto teen Mboko extends perfect run to reach third round at French Open

PARIS - Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko was No. 333 in the WTA Tour rankings at the start of 2025. On Friday, she’ll play in the third round of the French Open main draw.

It has been an unexpectedly fast and furious climb up the women’s professional tennis ladder, and she’s just getting started.

“I was very focused throughout the whole match," Mboko said Wednesday after seeing off No. 59 ranked Eva Lys of Germany, 6-4, 6-4 in her second-round match. "Of course she was a very solid player, especially from the baseline. She really made me earn every single point."

Ranked No. 156 at the April 21 entry deadline for the qualifying, Mboko was unseeded. And yet, she ran through three quality players — Sinja Kraus of Austria, Kathinka Von Deichmann of Liechtenstein and Kaja Juvan of Slovenia — without dropping a single set.

She continued that run in her first-round win over Lulu Sun of New Zealand, a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon last year, and added another straight-sets win over Lys, a 23-year-old currently ranked a career-high No. 59.

With the win over Lys, Mboko will officially enter the top 100 after the end of the French Open. She currently boasts a “live” ranking of No. 89 as she prepares to meet No. 8 seed Zheng Qinwen in the third round on Friday.

Mboko, who was born in the United States and raised in Toronto, began the season making moves on the lower-tier ITF circuit. After 22 straight victories and four titles, she was on her way.

Few were paying attention then. But through her agency IMG, she was able to get a wild card into both the Miami Open and the Italian Open — WTA 1000-level events similar to Canada’s National Bank Open.

She pushed No. 10 Paula Badosa to a third-set tiebreak in Miami and took world No. 2 Coco Gauff to three sets in Rome, drawing huge plaudits from the 21-year-old American who saw something of herself in her Canadian opponent.

After reaching the final of a WTA 125 tournament in Parma, Italy, Mboko headed straight to Paris.

She had competed at Roland Garros three years ago during a successful junior career that brought her to No. 4 in the world but also had her competing with a knee that hurt every single day for several years.

She’s healthy now, finally. And this was her first Grand Slam tournament in the senior ranks. Mboko has made the most of it.

That anonymity she enjoyed just a few months ago is gone now. With every victory she has posted in Paris, the spotlight has only become more bright.

All four Mboko children played tennis; fellow Canadian players Denis Shapovalov and Félix Auger-Aliassime both remember Kevin Mboko fondly from their early years.

But Mboko, by far the youngest of the four, ended up having that something special.

Her father Cyprien, a retired engineer who immigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo with wife Godée in the early 2000s, and who shepherded all four of his children through the junior tennis system in the Toronto area, is on hand. Kevin and her big sister Gracia, who turns 29 on Thursday, are both in Paris supporting her.

After her qualifying victories, one Canadian journalist was there to get her thoughts as they stood outside the entrance to the second stadium court, Suzanne-Lenglen, at the other end of the site.

After beating Lys on Wednesday, Mboko was assigned the main press conference room in the Roland Garros media centre.

She also had one-on-one interviews with European and American sports networks, with the French sports daily L’Équipe and with a well-known tennis podcast.

Everyone is hopping aboard the Mboko bandwagon.

“Of course there is so much happening, even behind the scenes. But I feel like my family has been doing a good job of keeping me really isolated from it all. I have just been enjoying the moment. And I have been enjoying time with my sister and my brother,” she said.

Mboko hasn’t been home to spend time with family much in recent years. She spent about seven months at the Justine Henin Academy in Belgium last year — there were people from that academy in attendance for her first-round victory, followed by a hug-filled reunion.

And this year, she has been on the road constantly — the French Open is her 11th tournament of the season. Plus she made her Billie Jean King Cup debut representing Canada in Japan last month.

She still has braces on her upper teeth; she said she has to wait to get them taken off until she’s home in Burlington, Ont., for a decent amount of time.

But before all that, she will face Zheng on Friday.

Zheng, a finalist at the 2024 Australian Open who won Olympic gold in singles on these same red clay courts last summer, said Mboko’s age and inexperience don’t mean she’ll underestimate her.

“I think every time I see a young player coming, they have a lot of hunger, for sure. They fight a lot, because it's their dream place. But same as me; it's my dream place too,” Zheng said. “When you arrive in the professional tour, you don't think any more about the age because everybody's the same. You just face another opponent.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.