Teenager Victoria Mboko continued her breakthrough French Open run by reaching the third round, where she will face Olympic champion and eighth seed Qinwen Zheng.
The Canadian, 18, is making her grand slam main draw debut in Paris and is still yet to drop a set after advancing through Roland Garros qualifying.
She defeated Germany’s Eva Lys 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday, and is likely to now qualify automatically for Wimbledon after starting the year ranked at No. 333 in the world.
Mboko is also set to become just the third teenager in the world’s top 100, alongside the sixth seed Mirra Andreeva and Australia’s Maya Joint.
The teenager also built on her remarkable season and now has recorded 42 victories across all levels while losing just five matches - two of which were to top-10 players Coco Gauff and Paula Badosa.
Mboko, whose parents emigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo due to political conflict before she was born, said Serena Williams and Canada’s 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu were among her idols.
“I feel like when I was a lot younger watching tennis a lot on TV, I always saw Serena kind of winning everything. It was easy for me to look up to her as a role model. She was such an icon at the time,” Mboko said.
“I really loved the way she used to play. When I was younger, I tried to hit like her and tried to hit the ball hard. She's such an inspiration for so many girls out there. Not only just me.
“Also, I looked up a little bit to Bianca Andreescu when she won the US Open in 2019. She was the first Canadian to do so, it was really a big deal for us. It kind of changed a little bit the way things worked there.”
China’s Zheng has now won eight matches in a row at Roland Garros after winning the gold medal at last summer’s Olympics, beating Iga Swiatek and Donna Vekic in the medal matches.
The 22-year-old defeated Colombia’s Emiliana Arango 6-2 6-3 to set up a meeting with the in-form Mboko.
