{"id":23716,"date":"2026-02-13T07:40:03","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/teen-sensation-mboko-closes-in-on-top-10-after-beating-rybakina-in-qatar\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:29","slug":"teen-sensation-mboko-closes-in-on-top-10-after-beating-rybakina-in-qatar","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/teen-sensation-mboko-closes-in-on-top-10-after-beating-rybakina-in-qatar\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen sensation Mboko closes in on top 10 after beating Rybakina in Qatar"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Victoria Mboko took a big step towards entering the top 10 in the Women&#8217;s Tennis Association rankings for the first time after the Canadian teenager stunned Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina in the Qatar Open quarter-finals.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The 19-year-old battled to a 7-5 4-6 6-4 win in Thursday&#8217;s quarter-final in Doha to snap twice Grand Slam champion Rybakina&#8217;s nine-match winning run.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Going into the match I knew it was going to be a really hard battle and I wanted to stay calm,&#8221; said Mboko, who picked up her second victory over Rybakina in four meetings.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t really have that many expectations because she has a great record now, she just won the Australian Open. Going into the match I knew I had to play my &#8216;A&#8217; game.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;I do understand that the higher profile players you play, you&#8217;re going to have to raise your level.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Mboko started the 2025 season ranked outside the top 300 and is now 13th. She became the youngest player since Serena Williams to beat four major winners in a tournament en route to claiming last year&#8217;s Canadian Open in Montreal.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Mboko plays former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in the Doha semi-finals later on Friday, where a win will confirm her top 10 debut on Monday.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23717,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-23716","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"Victoria Mboko took a big step towards entering the top 10","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26602,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23716\/revisions\/26602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}