Sweet Victoria Mboko
HABARI DAILY I Kampala, Uganda I Thursday, August 7 2025, the final day of the world renowned Canadian Open, has been written down in sweet Victoria Mboko’s history book as the day that has transformed her life for ever.
In a match, which is scheduled for 18:00 local time, the Canadian teen fire-brand will face the four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, who defeated Clara Tauson 6-2, 7-6(7) in the second semi-final and is now a win away from capturing her first WTA title on the tour since having her daughter two years ago.
Just on Wednesday, 6 August, sweet Mboko, a 18-year-old rising star eked out a 1-6, 7-5, 7-6(4) victory over world no. 12 Elena Rybakina to reach her first career WTA-level final. Surprisingly, Mboko started the year ranked 333rd and was entered as a wild card.
Mboko in celebratory mode
Playing her heart out, Mboko overcame a difficult first set to sneak past the experienced Kazakhstani, winning the subsequent set and tiebreaker. This sent a wave of electric delight through her home crowd in Montreal.
This week, she made good on another wild card opportunity, defeating another pair of Top 100 players – Cristina Bucsa and Kamilla Rakhimova – to come through qualifying. A first-round defeat of wild card Arianna Zucchini landed Mboko with a prime time date when she took on No. 4 seed Coco Gauff in the Friday night session on Centrale, which she won.
Her semifinal victory over Rybakina makes Mboko the first Canadian player to beat three former Grand Slam champions (Sofia Kenin, Coco Gauff and Rybakina) in a single tournament.
Mboko grips the moment
She also became the youngest Canadian player to reach the final and the fourth to do so in the Open Era.
Mboko’s parents, Cyprien Mboko and Godee Kitadi, emigrated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1999 because of political turmoil, but but all her grandparents still live there.
Born August 26, 2006, in North Carolina to immigrant parents, she and her family later on moved to Toronto when she was a child. The youngest of four siblings, Mboko picked up her own racket at the age of 3, having been inspired by her three tennis-playing siblings, according to the World Tennis Association.
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