Victoria Mboko vs. Naomi Osaka: Montreal final preview, and where to watch it

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Start time: 6:00 p.m. ET, Wednesday, August 6

A final between unseeded players can be a tournament’s worst nightmare. Instead of two stars in your title match, you have two people who few fans are likely to know or care about.

That is definitely not the case with Thursday’s Montreal final between Osaka and Mboko. They’re both unseeded, but at this point that’s a technicality. Everyone has heard of Osaka, and the fans up north care a lot about their countrywoman Mboko—even if few of them knew who the suburban-Toronto teenager was before last week.

As non-seeds, their roads were both one round longer than their higher-ranked tour-mates—they’ve won a Slam-like six matches to get here. Both have had their easier days and their harder days, but the most notable fact is that they both saved match points along the way.

• Osaka did it in the second round against Liudmila Samsonova, in a match that may have finally, after 20 months, put a spark in her comeback.
• Mboko did it in the semifinals against Elena Rybakina in an epic that may have put a new young star in the WTA’s firmament.

At this point, both women should feel confident in their ability to handle adversity and dig themselves out of a scoreline deficit.

“I kind of put in my head that I want to stay in there with her, and I want to bring as many balls back in the court as I possibly could, despite she was hitting a really clean and hard ball,” Mboko said after beating Rybakina, 1-6, 7-5, 7-6 (4).

She’s learning before our eyes what she’s capable of at the WTA level.

Osaka, 27 and ranked 49th, has never played Mboko, who is 18 and ranked 85th. Both have strong connections to the U.S.: Mboko was born in Charlotte, N.C., to parents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Osaka was born in Japan to an American father, and grew up in New York and Florida. Unfortunately for the States, one plays for Canada and the other for Japan.

Their backgrounds are somewhat similar, and their games even more so. Osaka has been one of the WTA’s best servers and hardest-hitters for close to a decade. Mboko looks like she could be both of those things very soon. She leads this tournament in aces, and she traded blows on even terms with Rybakina, another slugger, for two sets.

There are reasons to pick both women. Osaka has been here before; Mboko hasn’t. Mboko is coming off what she described as a “crazy night” against Rybakina, and she may find it hard to generate that same kind of energy again 24 hours later. Osaka has mostly been solid and mentally strong, but when Clara Tauson got her teeth into the the second set of their semifinal, Osaka started to lose her composure. The crowd will be with Mboko, which could rattle Osaka.

Neither is a sure thing, but I’ll take Osaka based on what we know about her. There’s plenty yet to find out about Mboko. Maybe she, and we, will discover more of what she’s capable of on Thursday. Winner: Osaka

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