Iga Swiatek, ranked world No. 3, experienced a surprising loss to Clara Tauson at the 2025 Canadian Open in Montreal. The 19th-ranked Danish player defeated Swiatek 6-7(1), 3-6 in the tournament’s last 16. Swiatek, who had carried a nine-match winning streak and recently won her first Wimbledon title, committed 46 unforced errors, including 25 from her forehand side.

Swiatek fought to recover from a 5-3 deficit in the first set but ultimately lost the tiebreak decisively. In the second set, although Swiatek broke back when trailing 1-4, Tauson secured a critical break and then closed the match. This marks Swiatek’s first defeat in four meetings with Tauson and brought her Canadian Open record to 8-4, with a previous best performance reaching the semifinals in 2023.

Post-match, Swiatek candidly assessed her performance: “I made too many mistakes in the tiebreak. In the second set, I felt Clara had the wind in her sails and I didn’t really know how to solve the problems. I definitely made too many mistakes on balls I could have played.”

She acknowledged the challenge of adapting to hard courts and viewed these matches as learning opportunities. “I feel like I made the same mistakes I did at the end of my hard-court season in March.”

Swiatek is set to compete next at the WTA 1000 tournament in Cincinnati, starting August 7. Tauson, who lost to Swiatek at Wimbledon, reflected on her win: “I just felt like after I won the first set that I needed to continue, because I know she’s never going to give up… So I felt like if I could keep that going, I thought I had a shot.”

Victoria Mboko has made history as the youngest Canadian to reach the semi-finals of the Canadian Open, a WTA 1000 event, held in Montreal. The 18-year-old wildcard entrant has delivered a sequence of impressive performances, defeating two Grand Slam champions on her way to the last four.

Mboko’s victories include a second-round win over 2020 Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin and a stunning upset against top seed and two-time major winner Coco Gauff in the fourth round. She followed these achievements with a straight-sets, 6-4, 6-2 win against Jessica Bouzas Maneiro to secure her place in the semi-finals.

This breakthrough comes just four months after Mboko made her WTA 1000 debut at the Miami Open, where she secured her first top-level victory before exiting in the second round. Her trajectory since then includes reaching the third round of the French Open and the second round at Wimbledon, culminating now in a semi-final appearance in Montreal. Mboko is only the third Canadian woman in the Open Era to reach this stage of the Canadian Open, joining Faye Urban and Bianca Andreescu.

Turning 19 in late August, Mboko is the youngest Canadian to advance this far and the youngest overall at this stage since Belinda Bencic won the title in 2015 at 18 years and five months.

Reflecting on her victory over Gauff, Mboko said, “Of course, to play against Coco, it was a really special experience, and I was really happy to have won that day. But at the end of the day, I’m still in the tournament, so it’s not like I went to celebrate or anything. I was still kind of locked in like I normally am in a tournament.

“You play a tournament because you want to win it. So, I think I just had that kind of mentality.”

Starting 2025 ranked No. 333, Mboko’s rise has been rapid, moving to No. 156 post-Miami Open and breaking into the top 100 after Roland Garros. She entered the Canadian Open at No. 85 and is projected to jump into the top 50 following her run, currently standing at No. 48 in live rankings. A semi-final win over 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina could propel her to around No. 33.

On managing physical demands, Mboko noted, “I don’t feel fresh, but I also don’t feel so tired. I think it helps that we had a day in between every single day to kind of regroup and collect myself. Every day, I’ve just been doing what I needed to do to recover well. Most of the days has been the night match, so I do have a lot of time in the day to take naps and do what I need to do to prepare for the night.”

Aryna Sabalenka begins her 50th career week ranked No. 1 on the WTA Tour, a significant milestone achieved without participating in this year’s Montreal tournament. These 50 weeks at the summit of women’s tennis come across two distinct periods: an initial eight-week run from September 11 to November 5, 2023, and a current streak of 42 consecutive weeks since October 21, 2024.

Sabalenka, a three-time Grand Slam champion, is the 14th player in WTA history to reach the 50-week threshold at No. 1 since the rankings were introduced in 1973. Currently, she holds a commanding lead with 12,420 ranking points, sitting 4,751 points clear of second-placed Coco Gauff, who has 7,669 points.

With title defenses looming at Cincinnati and the US Open worth a combined 3,000 points, Sabalenka looks poised to maintain her top ranking through the summer hard-court season, which begins later this week in Cincinnati.

This week also marks Sabalenka’s 200th career week inside the WTA’s Top 5 rankings. She initially entered the elite group on May 10, 2021, following her first Madrid title, and this current stretch is her longest ongoing tenure in the Top 5. Notably, she has spent 149 of these 200 weeks ranked within the Top 2.