OverDrive - Masters on how the quick turnaround will affect Mboko, her journey to the final, and the similarities between Mboko’s rise and Shapovalov’s.

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

TSN tennis reporter Mark Masters joins OverDrive to discuss Victoria Mboko’s journey to the final of the National Bank Open. Masters details how the quick turnaround will affect Mboko and how the wrist injury might affect her.

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the more you save. Switch to Canada's fastest 5G-plus network today. For details and more great offers, visit a Bell store or bell.ca slash promotions. Bell, back to school, just got better. All right. So this match tonight, we have Mboko and Osaka in Montreal. And I would qualify this as one of the more unlikely matches you'll ever see in a final, considering Mboko came from virtually nowhere, as I have a couple months ago. And Osaka, since coming back from having her child, I don't believe she's reached even a quarter final in any quality tournament since then. So she's back in a prominent spot tonight. Of course, Vicki Mboko is as well. well. And down in Montreal, we are joined by one of our favorites. It's our man, Mark Masters, live on location. Mark, how we feeling ahead of this big match tonight?

I'm feeling really excited, feeling good. I just watched Vicki and Boko finish her warm-up. We're out here tucked away on the side of the venue, Court 8. Her wrist taped up, but did not see any outward signs of pain or frustration with it. Pretty standard warm-up hit here. She's just talking with her team. One last pep talk with Coach Natalie. toes yet and yeah i'm i'm pumped up this is a this is a pretty big night guys it is it is and that triumph last night was special it was a long grueling match i think two hours and 46 minutes is what it took and of course we know the injury that imboko was dealing with she's a young player mark we know osaka's got a ton of experience how much do you think the turnaround so quickly

will affect these two combatants yeah i i think it's definitely a storyline going in uh i was just talking to Noel Van Laudam, she's the head of Women's Tennis for Tennis, Canada, and she said, you know, Mboko's young, she recovers fast, but you just don't know, there is a question. This will be the first time in the tournament she plays on consecutive days, so she's had a day off between all the other matches.

Osaka's going to be playing for a third straight day. She had to finish later than Mboko last night and said her at her news conference, she was a little sleepy. So, quick turnaround for both players. You would hope, just being 18 years old, a teenager, Mboko, will be

able to have that kind of bounce back ability and there's the adrenaline of a final and the crowd is going to be electric and carry her through. She seemed to respond. She said the wrist was feeling better after the match in the moment. You know, it hurt her kind of spirits and whatnot. But from what we just saw, I think she'll be all right. And yeah, but that's the question is kind of, you know, it's pretty hot here today. How are these two players going to react to to the very kind of quick turnaround here? So, Mark, I'll take you back to last night. We'll just look at the journey here from in Boko, like obviously beating Cocoa Gough was considered, you know, a massive upset and then

went on to kind of handily beat her, then went on to impressively come back last night against Robikina. When you look at how, you know, she was able to come back after losing 6-1 in that opening set, which one of those two do you think was kind of more impressive for you? It's the one last night. That, to me, that was a lot of grit. Like, we'd get kind of pumped in the first set, six one, don't hold serve even once. And then you blow leads of three love in five,

three, and find a way to win a second day. You have the fall, you hurt your wrist, you're not feeling good. You're facing a grand slam, you know, champion, big server on the other side,

leads the tour and aces. And then, you know, you keep falling behind a break into the deciding set, and you keep coming back, you get to the kind of the final set tie break, you know, are you going to blank? She doesn't do it with all that was on the line there.

So to me, it was last night. I mean, golf's going through some stuff right now. Her serves a bit of a, mess. There's a lot of double-faulting happening. She was, I kind of, it felt like she was there to be had. Rebeccaana has had some troubles closing, but to me last night, that's,

that's a quality win, a signature win. We'll see what happens, but to me that last night was just the most impressive win that she's had here. Mark Masters, live from Montreal ahead of Mboko versus Osaka in the NBO final. Mark, you chronicled the sport

of tennis. You've been doing a great job of it for a long time. You saw the rise of you, Jeanne Bouchard, you saw the rise of Bianca on Drescue. How would you, and Lela Fernandez, certainly as well, would qualify? How would you characterize what we've seen from Mbocco compared to those three? You know what? I think this is most similar to Chappavala, maybe, in terms of the rise. Like, he kind of came out of nowhere to make the semifinals here in 2017.

You know, it wasn't ranked particularly high. You know, Andrescue, when she went on to win in 2019 in Toronto, know, she had already won Indian Wells. She had been hurt a lot that season. So there's questions about where she'd be physically. But, you know, she was already established as a big game kind of player there with that run that she had. And so I think this is kind of unique in a way.

And now I think we're going to see something tonight that we haven't seen before in Canadian tennis. You know, Atrescue wins that final in Toronto. When Serena Williams retires from the match, four games in, it was anticlimatic. You know, Milohranich in 2013 made the final here against Raffa Nidal. But it was a 6262 loss, so we didn't really get the intense kind of moment, the payoff. And I think we could see that here tonight. A Canadian battling for the trophy at the biggest tournament this country's got in its home soil.

It's going to be a cool moment tonight. Well, and what will this mean for Mboku? Like, we heard her say she grew up idolizing Osaka, a chance to face her on home soil and a chance to win, you know, a title here. That'd be pretty incredible. Yeah, I mean, it would be something. I was, you know, looking at the match, you know, notes they give us. She'd be the second youngest player to beat four Grand Slam champions on Route 2

to a title since Serena Williams. That's a pretty good company with the only one younger to do that. So in the same tournament. So, like, you're looking for markers here to see, you know, we know she's a special player. How good is she going to be? You don't want to get carried away. I mean, 2014, I can't tell you how many interviews I probably did where, you know,

the questions are like not if Jeannie Bouchard is going to win, Grand Flan, but how many. So it's easy to get carried away in the moment. Players go on ups and downs, and injuries play a big role in things too, right? On Drescue probably would, you know, who knows where she'd be at if she'd been able to be healthy. And unfortunately, here in Montreal, she had the injury that forced her to retire or withdraw after that first round win.

So you don't want to get carried away, but it's pretty clear in Boko's a special player, and she's got that kind of mental X factor, that fight, that grit. I was talking to Sylvan Bruno, who coached andrescue to that amazing run in 2019, and he was just saying she's the game of the future. She can attack, she can defend, she moves well, and she's clearly got the fight and the mental side. So you don't want to get carried away, but this is, you know, every step of the way, it just kind of makes you think that this is going to be a really special career that's just starting out here. Mark Masters with us.

If Mboko wins, she moves up to 25th in the world rankings. If she were to lose, she'd be 35th. So regardless, a massive jump for her. where does that take her not only as far as the tennis world goes, Mark, but with sponsorships, endorsements, and the like. Yeah, well, I mean, she, this is, you know, this is a player that at the beginning of this tournament did not have a picture on her bio page on the WTA website.

Let's, you know, let that sink in for a moment. So you go to her page, it's a silhouette. You know, that was the case when she beat Coco Goss. People know her name. People know her face. If she wins tonight, she'll be seated at the U.S. Open. I guess it's always possible she could sneak in if she's 35, depending on the health of other players. And maybe she's still technically entered in Cincinnati,

which has already started, by the way. It's a weird scheduling. They've really pushed everything together this year with the longer master's events. So she could gain some more points if she even gets there. I would imagine she might choose rest after this pretty great grueling stretch here. But people are going to know her. There's no going to be, there's no one,

she's going to be sneaking up on anymore. The other players are going to know her. They're going to be looking for it. No one's going to be taking it easy against her. And there's going to be a bit more expectation and pressure for sure when it comes to, you know, when she saddles up to the U.S. Open, right? You know, people are going to expect her to do things. I'm sure, you know, based on this, she might get some more night matches or be put in on some big courts. You know, the U.S. Open loves a young up-and-coming players.

So she's arrives. And now, you know, this has been kind of all new underdog territory here. There will be another stage coming up. and, you know, that's always tricky. I was talking to Laila Annie Fernandez earlier today and about her Cinderella run and the key to handling that. And she talks about, you know, people, sometimes they change their teams. You know, they get a bigger entourage and it changes things.

And she felt it was important to kind of keep her team small. You know, I remember Jeannie Bouchard, after that amazing run in 2014, to start 2015, she had a new coach, a new agent. It felt like she changed a lot of things. And obviously she never really recapture the magic. So it's not easy, right? there's a reason why it's it's not most players that can maintain it at this level. So it'll be a new stage in our career,

but everything we've seen so far would lead us to believe that you can handle it. Mark, thank you for the time today. Enjoy the match tonight. Have you made a visit to Schwartz's since you've been in Montreal? I haven't had a chance. Maybe tomorrow before I leave, but yeah, that would be nice. All the best, the best. Because I was looking at the lease schedule to see when I'm back in Montreal,

and I don't think, obviously, they have a pre-season, trip but don't think they're back until November so I'd like to get a little smoke meat just to tide me over but we'll see I think my flight's in the morning tomorrow so you can you can figure out it's open late I think you can they'll stay open late for you Mark come on they'll make I'll knock you to see what happens here all right thanks man in Boko will go and yeah that's a good idea

and I can tag along that'd be nice pick Vicki thank guys thank you that is Mark Masters The biggest songs in the world heard them countless times now learn the details of how they came to be join ruby car for encore the stories behind the songs you love new interviews and newly unearthed archive footage make for a fascinating weekly deep dive stream encore the stories behind the songs you love on iHeart radio or wherever you get your podcasts