Toronto teen Victoria Mboko breaks through to French Open main draw

The Canadian Press

· Posted: May 23, 2025 3:29 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Victoria Mboko's breakout play conscionable deed different gear.

The 18-year-old from Toronto powered her mode into the French Open main gully Friday, beating Slovenia's Kaja Juvan 7-5, 6-3 successful the last circular of qualifying successful Paris.

The tennis satellite is taking announcement of the Canadian, who's racked up 40 wins successful 45 matches this twelvemonth — mostly connected the lower-tier ITF circuit — with 5 titles and eye-catching appearances astatine WTA events successful Miami and Rome, wherever she took a acceptable disconnected satellite No. 2 Coco Gauff.

"I ne'er adjacent thought I was going to beryllium playing a large truthful soon. Even similar astatine the opening of the year, I was ranked successful the 300s," she said. "It's conscionable destiny and everyone is moving hard to this goal."

Now ranked No. 122 successful the world, Mboko didn't driblet a acceptable successful qualifying and said a cardinal to her occurrence was staying calm.

"I really didn't truly consciousness that tense earlier the match. I consciousness similar I've been playing a batch of matches the past mates of months, truthful contiguous was honestly conscionable different lucifer for maine — similar the 2nd oregon 3rd circular of different tourney oregon similar a 50K [ITF event]. I tricked my encephalon into making it look similar it's not a large deal."

She opens main-draw play Sunday against No. 45 Lulu Sun of New Zealand.

Canadians at Roland-Garros

Mboko is 1 of 5 Canadians successful singles astatine Roland-Garros, joining Leylah Fernandez of Laval, Que., successful the women's draw, and Felix Auger-Aliassime, Gabriel Diallo and Denis Shapovalov connected the men's side.

Fernandez, ranked 27th successful the world, opens against No. 34 Olga Danilovic of Serbia.

Shapovalov, ranked 27th connected the men's side, opens against No. 48 Pedro Martinez of Spain. No. 29 Auger-Aliassime faces No. 39 Matteo Arnaldi of Italy, and Diallo, ranked 53rd, faces No. 18 Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina.

Auger-Aliassime's French Open tune-up came to an extremity Friday with a 6-1, 6-4 nonaccomplishment to Andrey Rublev successful the semifinals of the Hamburg Open. The nonaccomplishment dropped Auger-Aliassime's grounds against the Russian to 1-7.

Still, getting successful 4 competitory matches connected clay astatine the ATP 500 lawsuit volition assistance aft Auger-Aliassime pulled retired of the Italian Open earlier this period with a sore back.

Auger-Aliassime's 3 wins successful Hamburg were his archetypal connected clay this season. He hadn't won connected circuit since a second-round triumph successful Miami backmost successful March.

Fernandez and Diallo volition besides vie successful doubles, portion Ottawa's Gabriela Dabrowski teams up with New Zealand's Erin Routliffe successful women's doubles.

Rob Shaw of North Bay, Ont., received a chaotic paper into the wheelchair quad singles and doubles draws.