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.”

Victoria Mboko’s breakthrough at the Montreal WTA 1000 event marks a significant milestone in her young career. The 18-year-old Canadian advanced to the semifinals after a strong 6-4, 6-2 victory over Spain’s Jessica Bouzas Maneiro in the quarterfinals. This win followed her stunning fourth-round upset of Coco Gauff, the tournament’s top seed and reigning Roland Garros champion.

Mboko’s run in Montreal is historic, as she becomes the youngest semifinalist at this WTA 1000 tournament in Canada in a decade. The last player to reach the semifinals at such a young age was Belinda Bencic, who won the Toronto title in 2015 at just slightly older than Mboko is now. Furthermore, Mboko is the first Canadian to reach the semifinals since the event moved to Quebec, with previous Canadian semifinalists like Faye Urban and Bianca Andreescu having done so in Toronto.

In her seventh career WTA main draw appearance, Mboko has also joined an exclusive group as just the third player in the Open Era to reach her first tour-level semifinal at this tournament. Against Bouzas Maneiro, ranked 51st in the world, Mboko maintained her high level, breaking serve five times over 72 minutes and closing out the match by winning the last six games.

This season, Mboko joins teenagers Mirra Andreeva and Alexandra Eala as the only players to reach a WTA 1000 semifinal in 2025, a feat not seen since 2009. Looking ahead, Mboko aims to become only the third Canadian in the Open Era to reach the final at their home WTA 1000 event, which would require overcoming the very player who halted her previous best tournament run.

Mboko’s performance continues to signal the rise of a promising talent on the WTA Tour, one to watch closely as the season unfolds.