In January, Victoria Mboko ranked outside the top 300 and competing on the ITF circuit in the Caribbean, while the sport’s spotlight was trained on the stars at the Australian Open.
Only the staunchest of tennis fans would have noted she scooped those two Caribbean titles, plus her next two tournaments, to begin her season with a 20-0 record.
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The 18-year-old then won her fourth title in five events at an ITF 75K tournament in Portugal, and by this point, she’d halved her ranking.
That’s when she took the step up to WTA level in Miami – and what an impression she has made since.
Just a few months on, Mboko scooped the WTA 1000 title on home soil in Montreal, the first tour-level title of her burgeoning career and one achieved by beating four Grand Slam champions along the way.
Mboko’s victims included Sofia Kenin, No.1 seed Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina – from match point down in the semifinals – and Naomi Osaka in a compelling final, also from a set down.
She has risen to 24th in the WTA rankings, ensuring she will be seeded at the US Open.
"Queen Victoria! She's been absolutely killing it,” former world No.20 Daria Saville said on this week’s episode of The Tennis, released a day before the Montreal final.
“It all started with her going and grinding [on the ITF circuit] in January. She won four tournaments back-to-back, then she won another in March, and that's when she started getting into the Masters 1000s.
“It's incredible that now she's in the final [in Canada].”
Ranked as low as 337th in mid January, Mboko has built a win-loss record of 53-9 across all tournament levels in 2025, showing incredible resilience and robustness along her journey.
Saville observed how well she rebounded from a heartbreaking defeat in the final round of Wimbledon qualifying – she held five match points against Priscilla Hon before losing – to soar just a month later in Canada.
Simon Rea, another guest on The Tennis this week, remembers Mboko’s WTA 1000 main-draw debut in Miami, where she won her first-round match then stretched 10th seed Paula Badosa to a third-set tiebreak.
"I watched her play in Miami, and the weapons leapt off the court at you, literally, in terms of the heat she brings – not just on first serve, but on second serve. Both serves are a legitimate weapon for her,” said Rea, a former coach of Nick Kyrgios and Sam Stosur.
“She's got a great team around her; [1998 Wimbledon finalist] Nathalie Tauziat and the Tennis Canada federation are supporting her really strongly.
“I just feel like there's a physicality about her that's so impressive. [Watching her] it just felt like a player that, to me, wasn't going to miss.
“And sure enough, three, four, five months down the track, she's on the verge of being seeded at Grand Slam time.”
Osaka, meanwhile, has joined Mboko in the top 25 after her performance in Canada, her highest ranking since January 2022.