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Patrick Mouratoglou Makes Huge Career Prediction About Victoria Mboko After her Maiden Masters 1000 Title at the Canadian Open

Originally posted on FirstSportz | By Ermina Reyaz | Last updated Aug 15, 2025 8:25 PM ET

Victoria Mboko had a historic triumph at the Canadian Open this season. The 18-year-old defeated four Grand Slam champions en route to claiming her maiden WTA title. Mboko commenced the 2025 season ranked No. 333. She was No. 85 before the Canadian Open and surged to No. 24 in the rankings after winning her home tournament. She is only the third Canadian to win this title.

Mboko saved a match point in the semifinal against Elena Rybakina. In the final, Mboko defeated four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka in three sets. Osaka’s former coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, whom she parted ways with before the tournament, recently gave his take on Mboko’s current form via Instagram:

Victoria Mboko’s main asset is that she has no respect. This doesn’t mean she’s disrespectful, but rather that she doesn’t look at other players and think, ‘Wow, I can’t beat this player, I’m not there yet.’ No, she plays to win, no matter who she’s facing. She started the year ranked 300th. It’s hard to imagine she won’t win a Grand Slam.

The young Canadian, who is 53-9 on the season, earned $752,275 for victory in just her seventh career WTA main draw appearance. Mboke had $458,001 in earnings for her career before her Canadian Open win. Mouratoglou further added:

She’s very physical when she moves around the court and she’s very offensive, both on her forehand and backhand. She controls the court and has a special aura about her. The year before, she was playing Challenger tournaments and winning a lot. She goes there to win and she does. For me, that’s the most important message she sends, besides all the other qualities she possesses.

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Mboko, who faced a wrist injury during the tournament, withdrew from the Cincinnati Open, and so did Osaka. At the Cincinnati Open, the quarterfinal lineup includes Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek and Anna Kalinskaya, Veronika Kudermetova and Varvara Gracheva, and Jasmine Paolini and Coco Gauff. Both Osaka and Mboko will now be looking forward to the US Open, where both will likely be seeded.

Naomi Osaka’s split with coach Patrick Mouratoglou

Before working with Naomi Osaka, Patrick Mouratoglou had coached the likes of Serena Williams, Simona Halep, and Holger Rune. Osaka hired Mouratoglou in September last year after splitting with coach Wim Fissette, who is currently working with six-time Grand Slam champion Iga Swiatek.

Under Fissette, with whom she worked for two years, Osaka won the 2020 US Open and 2021 Australian Open titles. However, she struggled to perform consistently under Mouratoglou and announced her split from him on social media before the Canadian Open. Mouratoglou had earlier opened up about the split on CNN:

Physically, she is ready, and she’s a great competitor, she’s a great champion. So at some point, it’s going to work out. I have no doubt about it. The thing that was missing was the competitiveness. I think she’s a great competitor, but at that time she was not as good as a competitor as I think [she] can be and she has been in the past. And this is the thing that we didn’t solve.

Osaka then started working with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, with whom she reached her first WTA 1000 final in three years, showing great improvement. Wiktorowski had earlier coached Polish tennis stars Agnieszka Radwanska from 2011 to 2018 and Iga Swiatek from the end of 2021 to October 2024. With Wiktorowski, Swiatek won the first five of her six Grand Slams.

This article first appeared on FirstSportz and was syndicated with permission.

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