Victoria Mboko hits a return against Russia's Mirra Andreeva during their women's singles match at the Qatar Open in Doha on Wednesday.KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images
Rising Canadian tennis star Victoria Mboko is through to the quarter-finals of the Qatar Open after upsetting fifth seed Mirra Andreeva 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (5) on Wednesday.
Mboko, seeded 10th at the WTA 1000 hard court tournament, survived match point when Andreeva committed a double fault before converting a crucial break to tie the third set 5-5.
The Canadian finished off the victory in the tiebreaker by ending a match-point rally with a backhand winner.
The contest was the latest chapter in a budding rivalry between two of the top-10 players in women’s tennis.
They met for the first time last month in the final of the Adelaide International, with the 18-year-old Russian winning 6-3, 6-1.
Mboko improved her record to 11-3 this season. The 19-year-old from Toronto is coming off a breakout 2025 campaign in which she won two titles, including a 1000-level crown at the National Bank Open in Montreal.
She entered the Qatar Open with a career-high world ranking of 13th and could potentially break into the top-10 with a win in the quarter-finals.
Mboko will next face the winner of a third-round match between Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan and China’s Zheng Qinwen.
In doubles action, Ottawa’s Gabriela and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani, the fifth seeds, earned a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Czech Maria Bouzkova and Russian Liudmila Samsonova. But Montreal’s Leylah Fernandez and France’s Kristina Mladenovic dropped a 6-2, 4-6, 10-4 decision to the fourth-seeded tandem of Anna Danilina of Kazakhstan and Serbia’s Aleksandra Krunic.