Starting the second week of January, Mboko won her first 25 matches of the year, all without dropping a set, claiming titles in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Rome (Georgia), and Manchester (Great Britain). After losing a match in France, she won another title in Portugal. On Wednesday, as a wild card in Miami, Mboko made the transition to the WTA level and won again, 7-5, 5-7, 6-3, over the 54th-ranked Osorio.
So what’s going on with this teenager who finished each of the last two seasons ranked 333rd in the world? First, she’s pain-free for the first time in a couple of years. Knee issues plagued her in 2023 and 2024, and she spent much of that time training on clay to avoid high-impact hard courts. She also spent as much time “focused on my recovery” as she did focused on her game.
During this off-season, though, she trained with her Tennis Canada coaches in Montreal, and felt healthy enough to make progress again.
“We were working pretty hard on my on-court fitness,” Mboko told the Match Point Canada podcast. “I was feeling pretty confident going into the tournaments in the Caribbean. I was feeling pretty loose.”
Still, she didn’t have a 25-match win streak on her bingo card.
