Victoria Mboko is one of the rising figures in tennis. The 18-year-old hasn’t lost a single set since making her Grand Slam debut at Roland Garros this year.
The tennis player, one of the youngest tennis players at the Roland Garros, just reached the third round of the qualifiers at the French Open. She will compete against Olympian Qinwen Zheng on Friday. Mboko, who started this year ranked at No. 333, is set to automatically qualify for Wimbledon, according to The Independent. On Wednesday, she beat German player Eva Lys 6-4, 6-4.
Mboko has been raking up victory after victory. She recorded 42 victories and lost only five matches this year.
“That’s a lot,” Marko Strillic, one of her coaches, said in an interview, according to The Athletic. “If she keeps winning, you have to figure out a way to manage the schedule so that she doesn’t get hurt. This is for the long term.”
Mboko has her own mental tactic to stay cool on the court.
“Kind of just play it down,” she said after her Sunday game against New Zealander Lulu Sun. “Pretend like you’re playing somewhere else, that you’re not at a Grand Slam. It’s another clay-court tournament. That way, I don’t put as much pressure on myself and the points. I let loose and I kind of go for my shots a little bit more.”
If she keeps her current run, Mboko may become the third teenager to rank in the top 100 alongside Mirra Andreeva and Maya Joint.
Victoria Mboko hails from a tennis-playing family
Mboko was born in the United States and raised in Canada by Congolese parents. Her father, Cyprien, is a retired mechanical engineer, and her mother, Godée, is an accountant. They moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo to escape the First and Second Congo Wars of the mid-1990s, according to The Athletic. At first, the family remained separated due to visa issues, with Cyprien living in North Carolina and Godée in Montreal. They eventually reunited in North Carolina, where Mboko was born, and moved to Toronto when she was a child.
Mboko’s four siblings all play tennis. She said she was inspired by tennis players like Serena Williams and Canadian Bianca Andreescu to pursue her passion.
“I feel like when I was a lot younger, watching tennis a lot on TV, I always saw Serena kind of winning everything. It was easy for me to look up to her as a role model. She was such an icon at the time,” Mboko said, per The Independent. “I really loved the way she used to play. When I was younger, I tried to hit like her and tried to hit the ball hard. She’s such an inspiration for so many girls out there. Not only just me.”
“Also, I looked up a little bit to Bianca Andreescu when she won the US Open in 2019,” Mboko added. “She was the first Canadian to do so, it was really a big deal for us. It kind of changed a little bit the way things worked there.”
