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Montreal – First things first: you hope that the wrist injury Victoria Mboko suffered on Wednesday evening in her unlikely victory over Elena Rybakina does not play a role in the outcome of the largest competition of her young career.
Because as the 18-year-old from Burlington, Ont. Is on shape, and can beat her fourth former Grand Slam champion in this amazing first extensive edition of the Omnium Banque Nationale, it would be the story of the year in tennis.
And maybe even in the Canadian sport.
Rybakina served twice before the game. And Mboko saved a match point when the Forehand of the Wimbledon Champion 2022 crumbled in the final phase of an electrical encounter for a sold-out Stade Iga Meverte. A 1-6, 7-5, 7-6 (4) victory that lasted two hours and 46 minutes to complete.
There are always two sides on the storyline of each tennis competition. And the collapse of Rybakina fades to black in the euphoria around what Mboko has achieved this week. But it is not a knock on Mboko to also acknowledge what happened on the other side of the net.
If there is something, it is a tribute to her own grit and competitiveness. She not only shook off the wrist injury, which took place when she tried to break her fall after she only went over her judge, she also shook a nervy first set that ended in 31 minutes.
Mboko did some champions to do: she hung in it, kept fighting. And when the openings came, she plowed through them.
‘After the first set, Elena naturally played great tennis. I didn’t have much time to think about how I can improve and how I can do it better. But you know, I put a bit in my head that I want to stay there with her, and I want to bring so many balls back to court as I could, even though she hit a really clean and hard ball, “said Mboko last night.” So I think I just had that kind of mentality in the second set, and it really helped many difficult points. “
Rybakina’s Forehand had on average 20 km/h more than that of Mboko; Her backhand, 10 km/h. So on paper, Rybakina is better than Mboko at what the Canadian does best at this stage. Yet they just fought.
And while Rybakina has a much better season in 2025 than in 2024, when she withdrew from a number of tournaments with different diseases, her inability to conclude competitions at a number of big moments (USA Swiatek and Sabalenka, to name two) has been a recurring theme.
The forehand started flying for a long and wide range. And in most cases it seemed to be routine forehands who did not flee her. At the start of the game, the Kazakh won the longer rallies. Towards the end she was the one who ended them – and not on the winning side.
Mboko probably still couldn’t even believe it when she woke up this morning. Undoubtedly the wrist was also stiff and painful, after all the adrenaline was finished.
But if 18, things don’t hurt so much, so long. And used to playing with the pain of knees that barked her most of her junior career to her, Mboko has shown that her pain tolerance is quite high. You have to hope she just goes through and finds a way.
Her hunger for winning is a large part of what brought her to this stage. And there is another to go.
Perhaps it was lost in the defeat, but as much as the 27-year-old has trouble finding her form of the past since her return from maternity leave, there was a subtle shift in Wimbledon.
It was the match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, which she lost in three sets, but in which she showed a determination to run for each ball and to fight as hell, a fight that had been there one minute and the next in the 10 months since her return.
It did not pay off there. It did not pay in Washington, where she lost to Emma Raducanu.
But it is now displayed. It seems that she is finally focused on the corner.
The well -known introvert has shown a dizzying, cheeky side in her interviews on the field that we have rarely seen. It is almost as if she is free again – free from the expectations that came from the younger version of herself and again fit with a renewed joy for the game.
None of that, it must be emphasized, has something For the arrival of potential new coach Tomasz Witkorowski in Montreal last week. He did not bring a magical formula.
Apart from this: In her downward moments in the past year, Osaka would say that she felt the shadow of Serena Williams about her association with now-forming coach Patrick Mouratoglou. Especially when she didn’t win.
And now that is gone.
Not that Mouratoglou would compare her in any way with the goat of ladies knowledge; It was all in Osaka’s own way, her inherent feeling to hate to disappoint everyone.
But now it is a new start again. And Osaka played as if it’s.
And so, while Osaka has been playing her first WTA level final since Miami in 2022 (she made the Auckland final to start the 2025 season, but withdrew due to injury), it will be fascinating to see if the pressure of expectation own and others’ is.
She is confronted with a player nine years younger who cited her as a player she admired. It was a lifetime ago, when Mboko was a 14-year-old and Osaka had won four Grand Slam titles.
The one in blue. https://t.co/qblyvnsreq
– Stephanie Myles (@Opencourt) August 7, 2025
And she discovered that quite funny Wednesday evening, after she had defeated Clara Tauson 6-2, 7-6 (7) in the second semifinal.
“I don’t think that ever happened. I was shaken,” Osaka said laughing. “No, I mean, it’s really cute. I think tomorrow I have to have a very good posture. I can’t let her love me anymore. It’s funny because I see her on TV, and I was restrained, such as:” That is my little twins, because we both have our blue dresses and our sandwiches and everything. “
“I mean, I am really honored. I always said that I would like to play someone who looked at me in a certain way, so it happens much earlier than I thought it would do.”
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