Victoria Mboko is through to her second WTA 1000 final after she delivered a stellar display to defeat Jelena Ostapenko at the 2026 Qatar Open.<\/p>\n
The Canadian star prevailed 6-3, 6-2 against world No 24 Ostapenko in an hour and 14 minutes in the semi-finals of the WTA 1000 tournament in Doha.<\/p>\n
At the age of 19 years and 166 days,\u00a0Mboko<\/a> is the fourth-youngest finalist at the WTA Qatar Open since the event was founded in 2001 after Maria Sharapova (2005), Svetlana Kuznetsova (2004) and Ostapenko (2016).<\/p>\n The Canadian is aiming to win her second WTA 1000 title to add to her victory in Montreal last year, and she is chasing a third WTA Tour<\/a> title overall.<\/p>\n In her on-court interview, Mboko said:\u00a0\u201cYeah, I mean it\u2019s crazy. She was playing really great tennis from the start, so I felt like I had to step it up.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy to be here in the final and I wanna thank everyone who came to support because there\u2019s a lot of people. It\u2019s a lot more each round.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked how she felt physically after playing deciding sets in previous rounds, Mboko said: \u201cI feel pretty good. It\u2019s a part of the game, sometimes you have really long matches, sometimes it can be shorter, but it\u2019s important to rest up and take recovery into perspective and just do everything I can to be ready for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek both withdraw from WTA 1000 event in major blow<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n WTA Rankings Race To Riyadh: Rybakina stretches lead, Mboko 3rd, Swiatek 8th, Gauff 11th<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n After reaching the semi-finals in Doha, current world No 13 Mboko climbed three places in the Live WTA Rankings to a new projected career-high ranking of 10th.<\/p>\n If Mboko had lost to Ostapenko, it was possible that she could have been overtaken by Karolina Muchova \u2014 who is playing Maria Sakkari in the second semi-final.<\/p>\n However, by reaching the championship match, Mboko has ensured that she will make her top 10 debut when the rankings update next week.<\/p>\n She has moved onto 3,246 points in the live rankings, while Muchova can earn a maximum of 3,058 points if she lifts the title.<\/p>\n If Mboko wins the final, her points total will jump to 3,596, which would see her overtake Elina Svitolina and become the world No 9.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: WTA stars call for more privacy after \u2018invasive\u2019 Coco Gauff camera incident<\/a> The post Victoria Mboko ensures landmark WTA Rankings breakthrough as she reaches Qatar Open final<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Victoria Mboko is through to her second WTA 1000 final after she delivered a stellar display to defeat Jelena Ostapenko at the 2026 Qatar Open. The Canadian star prevailed 6-3, 6-2 against world No 24 Ostapenko in an hour and 14 minutes in the semi-finals of the WTA 1000 tournament in Doha. At the age […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA Tour News<\/h2>\n
Mboko has clinched a major rankings milestone<\/h2>\n
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