Victoria Mboko saves match point, stuns Elena Rybakina to reach Montreal final

Oh, Canada, indeed! Eighteen-year-old Victoria Mboko advanced to the final of the Omnium Banque National with perhaps the most impressive win of her stunning at the WTA 1000 event in Montreal so far: a match-point saving win over No. 9 seed Elena Rybakina in a third-set tiebreak.

Mboko's 1-6, 7-5, 7-6(4) comeback against Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, was her third win over a Grand Slam champion in the last nine days: a first for a Canadian player at one tournament.

Aditionally, though she is the fourth home player to reach the final of Canada's signature event in the Open Era, she is the first to do it in Montreal. She is also the third wild card to reach the final at the tournament since 1968, and seeks to be the third to win it. Monica Seles did so in 1995, and Simona Halep followed in 2015.

But both were more established players than Mboko, who started the year ranked outside the Top 300 and played just six tour-level main draws previously

Mboko, who beat 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin and No. 1 seed Coco Gauff earlier in the tournament, was blitzed in the first set by Rybakina's first-strike tennis. The Kazakh, seeking her first WTA 1000-level final in more than a year, broke Mboko all three times she served in the opener. She largely wasn't challenged on serve after being broken in her first service game, despite only landing 41% of first serves.

But the plot shifted seismically to start the second, as Mboko dug in physically and mentally. After letting leads of 3-0 and 5-3 go, the teenager won back-to-back games to steal the middle set, and shook off a potentially scary moment at the start of the third. Chasing down a ball to start the second game, she went over on her ankle, and landed hard on her wrist.

She took a medical timeout at the set's first changeover, and played the rest of the match with some taping on that wrist.

"I had everyone supporting me and pushing me through," the teenager told the crowd in her on-court interview after twice breaking Rybakina when she served for the match, and erasing her chance to win in the 10th game.

"Without you guys, I don't think I would've been able to pull this through."