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SPORTSCENTRE Reporter

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Vicky Mboko will always remember how it sounded after winning championship point in Montreal.

"That's the loudest I've ever heard a stadium of people, I think," she told TSN late Thursday night. "That was such a surreal experience and, for me to be in the centre of it and the spotlight, honestly, I would have never believed that I was going to end up in this exact moment. It’s just amazing.”

The teenager from Toronto authored an incredible story in becoming the youngest ever Canadian to win the singles title at the country's biggest event, now called the National Bank Open.

Mboko, who turns 19 later this month, is only the third Canadian to do it in the Open era, joining an exclusive club with Bianca Andreescu (2019) and Faye Urban (1969).

Mboko beat four Grand Slam champions during an unlikely march to the title. She is the second youngest player to do that in one tournament in the Open era, older only than Serena Williams, who achieved the feat while winning her first major at age 17 at the 1999 US Open.

Mboko defeated 2020 Australian Open winner Sofia Kenin, two-time Grand Slam champion Coco Gauff and 2022 Wimbledon winner Elena Rybakina before upsetting four-time major titlist Naomi Osaka in the final.

"Vicky has no limits," said Sylvain Bruneau, who coached Andreescu to the Toronto title in 2019 and the US Open soon after that. "There's no limits mentally. There's no limits physically. She's an unbelievable athlete. And she's got the game of the future. She can play offence. She can counter. She can play defence. She's the full package."

Tennis Canada's head of women's tennis Noëlle van Lottum, who served as a support coach beside regular coach Nathalie Tauziat during the Montreal tournament, describes Mboko's style of play as a combination of Serena Williams and World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.

"She's a very aggressive player," van Lottum said after Mboko's quarterfinal win. "She can hit very hard. She's been working on the length of her shots, and it's very heavy. She has a huge serve. She plays a little bit like Serena, a combination between Serena and [World No. 1 Aryna] Sabalenka, but of course she's still very young and still needs to improve. She has a lot of margins for improvement, but that's a little bit her game style."

Mboko's rise this season was steady before becoming supersonic. She started the year ranked 333rd before stringing together 22 straight wins and four titles at lower-level events.

In May, Mboko qualified for the Masters 1,000-event in Rome on clay and took a set off Gauff before falling in the second round.

Mboko qualified for the French Open and made the third round in her Paris debut. At Wimbledon, she got in as a lucky loser and upset No. 25 seed Magdalena Frech before bowing out in the second round.

The signs were there. The potential was obvious. Mboko was on the rise, but nobody expected a breakthrough like what happened in Montreal.

So, how'd she do it?

"When I enter every tournament I always just say, 'It’s just a tournament,' and I never think of where I am or what the level is," Mboko explained. "I’m focused on what I have to do. I’m very simple [with] how I go about things. I like to be really relaxed. I kept it really simple this week and very calm and it helped me a lot."

Mboko faced adversity but held her nerve time and time again throughout the event. She lost the first set in three of her seven matches, including the final two.

Mboko sustained a wrist injury during Wednesday's semifinal showdown with Rybakina, but still managed to save a match point before triumphing in a final set tiebreak.

When Mboko woke up on Thursday morning, her wrist was swollen and so painful that she couldn't brush her teeth. She went to the hospital for an MRI. Luckily, there was no structural damage.

The wrist was taped up and bothered her at times in Thursday's championship match as Mboko double faulted 13 times. But amid the lingering pain and nerves associated with the biggest match of her life, Mboko stayed in the fight. And when Osaka's level dropped, she was ready to take advantage.

"As a person and as a player, she's pretty chill," observed 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Annie Fernandez during a conversation with TSN on Thursday morning. "She's super serious, and it's the same on court. Her personality doesn't really change, and it's super cool to see that. Sometimes you see players who are extremely calm off court, and then when they get on court, they're like 10 times, 100 times more energetic, but with Vicky, she's kind of the same all around. It's super cool to see how it all comes together for her."

Mboko did not get rattled despite falling behind Osaka, a player she idolized growing up, and when she got her chances, made the most of them. Mboko converted on eight of nine break points in the championship match.

"I remember meeting her when she was 14," said Tennis Canada's vice-president of communications and professional events Valérie Tétreault, a former WTA player who serves as the tournament director in Montreal.

"You could always feel that she believed in herself. She had big ambitions. She had big dreams, but she also had what it takes to make it to the top level. I think we see that she's a very complete player. She's powerful. She has a big serve. She's athletic. She's very fast on the court. But, to me, what's most impressive is how she's been able to manage all kind of situations."

Mboko entered Montreal ranked No. 85 and needing a wildcard into the draw. She is the second-lowest ranked player to win a Tier I / WTA 1,000 title since the format's introduction in 1990. Only Kim Clijsters won a title this big from a ranking so low. But Clijsters had already played in four Grand Slam finals when she parlayed a wild card into a second career title at Indian Wells in 2005.

Mboko, meanwhile, didn't even have a picture on her profile page on the WTA Tour website when she knocked out top seed Gauff in the third round in Montreal.

Mboko is up to No. 24 in the world, making her the top-ranked Canadian in singles. Everyone knows her now.

The pressure and expectations will only grow as Mboko gets set to play in her first ever US Open main draw later this month. Mboko's team is confident she can manage the new reality.

"It’s very surprising for an 18-year-old to be that strong mentally," said Tennis Canada's strength and conditioning coach Virginie Tremblay.

Tremblay highlighted one creative way Mboko has found to keep out any distracting outside noise.

"She always has the AirPods on and there's never any music in it," Tremblay said with a smile. "Sometimes a little bit, but sometimes I’m asking her to [remove the AirPods] but she’s like, 'No, I can hear you.' She really likes to stay sometimes in her bubble."

Asked how she plans to celebrate the biggest win of her career, Mboko did not have anything specific in mind. She was simply looking forward to some rest and relaxation with friends and family.

"Sometimes when I see young players succeed, the team gets bigger," said Fernandez, who experienced her own Cinderella run as a teenager at the US Open. "They got two or three more coaches, there's maybe a second fitness trainer, it just gets bigger and bigger, and we sometimes forget our goal that we had when we first started tennis. I think Vicky, she has a great team around her, her family's with her, so I feel like they're keeping her grounded."

After winning the title in Montreal, Mboko reiterated that she likes a small team and has no plans to change that despite taking home a cheque for $752,275 (US). She understands there will be more attention on her, but is planning to stick to the same routines.

Mboko pulled out of the 1,000-level event in Cincinnati, which started on Thursday, in order to rest the wrist, and recharge ahead of the season's final Grand Slam.

After Andreescu won the Toronto tournament in 2019, she skipped Cincinnati before winning the US Open in her first ever main draw appearance in New York.

After an 18-year-old Denis Shapovalov beat Rafael Nadal and reached the semifinals as a wild card in Montreal in 2017, he won three qualifying matches to get into the US Open for the first time, and then won three more matches in the main draw.

The momentum from a run like this can carry a player a long way.  

There will be plenty of time to consider what comes next for Mboko. For now, though, she is enjoying this watershed moment.

"It means everything," she said. "To play in front of the home crowd, in front of my whole family, to have this experience the past two weeks has just been surreal. I, honestly, couldn't be happier."