Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko was No. 333 in the WTA Tour rankings at the start of 2025. On Friday, she'll play in the third round of the French Open main draw.

It has been an unexpectedly fast and furious climb up the women's professional tennis ladder, and she's just getting started.

"I was very focused throughout the whole match," Mboko said Wednesday after seeing off No. 59 ranked Eva Lys of Germany, 6-4, 6-4 in her second-round match. "Of course she was a very solid player, especially from the baseline. She really made me earn every single point."

Ranked No. 156 at the April 21 entry deadline for the qualifying, Mboko was unseeded. And yet, she ran through three quality players — Sinja Kraus of Austria, Kathinka Von Deichmann of Liechtenstein and Kaja Juvan of Slovenia — without dropping a single set.

She continued that run in her first-round win over Lulu Sun of New Zealand, a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon last year, and added another straight-sets win over Lys, a 23-year-old currently ranked a career-high No. 59.

WATCH | Toronto teenager Victoria Mboko extends run at French Open:

Toronto’s Victoria Mboko soars to 3rd round at French Open

Toronto's Victoria Mboko extended her run at the French Open after winning in straight sets on Wednesday to reach the third round. CBC’s Dale Manucdoc has reaction from the local tennis community.

With the win over Lys, Mboko will officially enter the top 100 after the end of the French Open. She currently boasts a "live" ranking of No. 89 as she prepares to meet No. 8 seed Zheng Qinwen in the third round on Friday.

Mboko, who was born in the United States and raised in Toronto, began the season making moves on the lower-tier ITF circuit. After 22 straight victories and four titles, she was on her way.

Few were paying attention then. But through her agency IMG, she was able to get a wild card into both the Miami Open and the Italian Open — WTA 1000-level events similar to Canada's National Bank Open.

She pushed No. 10 Paula Badosa to a third-set tiebreak in Miami and took world No. 2 Coco Gauff to three sets in Rome, drawing huge plaudits from the 21-year-old American who saw something of herself in her Canadian opponent.

After reaching the final of a WTA 125 tournament in Parma, Italy, Mboko headed straight to Paris.

She had competed at Roland Garros three years ago during a successful junior career that brought her to No. 4 in the world but also had her competing with a knee that hurt every single day for several years.

That anonymity she enjoyed just a few months ago is gone now. With every victory she has posted in Paris, the spotlight has only become more bright.

All four Mboko children played tennis; fellow Canadian players Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime both remember Kevin Mboko fondly from their early years.

But Mboko, by far the youngest of the four, ended up having that something special.

Her father Cyprien, a retired engineer who immigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo with wife Godee in the early 2000s, and who shepherded all four of his children through the junior tennis system in the Toronto area, is on hand. Kevin and her big sister Gracia, who turns 29 on Thursday, are both in Paris supporting her.

After her qualifying victories, one Canadian journalist was there to get her thoughts as they stood outside the entrance to the second stadium court, Suzanne-Lenglen, at the other end of the site.

After beating Lys on Wednesday, Mboko was assigned the main press conference room in the Roland Garros media centre.

She also had one-on-one interviews with European and American sports networks, with the French sports daily L'Equipe and with a well-known tennis podcast.

Mboko's bandwagon growing

Everyone is hopping aboard the Mboko bandwagon.

"Of course there is so much happening, even behind the scenes. But I feel like my family has been doing a good job of keeping me really isolated from it all. I have just been enjoying the moment. And I have been enjoying time with my sister and my brother," she said.

Mboko hasn't been home to spend time with family much in recent years. She spent about seven months at the Justine Henin Academy in Belgium last year — there were people from that academy in attendance for her first-round victory, followed by a hug-filled reunion.

And this year, she has been on the road constantly — the French Open is her 11th tournament of the season. Plus she made her Billie Jean King Cup debut representing Canada in Japan last month.

She still has braces on her upper teeth; she said she has to wait to get them taken off until she's home in Burlington, Ont., for a decent amount of time.

But before all that, she will face Zheng on Friday.

Zheng, a finalist at the 2024 Australian Open who won Olympic gold in singles on these same red clay courts last summer, said Mboko's age and inexperience don't mean she'll underestimate her.

"I think every time I see a young player coming, they have a lot of hunger, for sure. They fight a lot, because it's their dream place. But same as me; it's my dream place too," Zheng said. "When you arrive in the professional tour, you don't think any more about the age because everybody's the same. You just face another opponent."

Hobbled Ruud drops 2nd-round match

Clearly hampered by a bad left knee, two-time French Open finalist Casper Ruud dropped 13 of the last 14 games and lost 2-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-0 to Nino Borges in the second round, then revealed he had been playing in pain off-and-on throughout the clay-court season.

The seventh-seeded Ruud reached at least the semifinals each of the past three years in Paris — he was the runner-up to Rafael Nadal in 2022 and Novak Djokovic in 2023 — and this exit is his earliest at the tournament since bowing out in the second round in his debut in 2018.

He's been taking pain-killing and anti-inflammatory pills the past several weeks, and did so again Wednesday. But Ruud said the knee began bothering him in the first set against Borges, who is ranked 41st and became the first Portuguese man to get to the French Open's third round.

Ruud said the worst shot for his knee is an open-stance backhand, in which he slides on his left foot, so he's been avoiding it in practice.

"Certain movements out there are kind of what makes it painful. Certain shots are painful to do. When you're playing matches, you can't really control it in the same way [as in practice]. You do everything you can to get to every ball," said Ruud, who also reached the final at the 2022 U.S. Open. "Sometimes you kind of forget that this is a shot I shouldn't go for."

He was visited by a trainer and took some pills during Wednesday's match, but nothing seemed to help.

"It's a Slam. I love this tournament," Ruud said. "Looking back, I tried my best to continue [and tried] to avoid the shots that are hurting. But towards the end, there were also other movements that started hurting, so it wasn't ideal."

He said the problems began in his first clay event of the pre-French Open stretch, at Monte Carlo in April, and that he had medical exams a couple of weeks later in Madrid, where he went on to win the title. Ruud pulled out of the Geneva Open, which was played last week.

Other results:

• Both defending champions were in action at Court Philippe-Chatrier. Carlos Alcaraz overcame a one-set blip to defeat Fabian Marozsan 6-1, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, and Iga Swiatek met 2021 U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu later.
• 2024 runner-up Jasmine Paolini and Olympic gold medallist Zheng Qinwen, while Olympic silver medallist and Wimbledon semifinalist Donna Vekic lost to unseeded American Bernarda Pera 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (10-3). Men advancing included No. 8 Lorenzo Musetti and No. 25 Alexei Popyrin.

Who is playing Thursday?

The second round concludes with 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic taking on France's Corentin Moutet in Court Suzanne-Lenglen in a match that could feature a raucous atmosphere.

French fans are likely to make a lot of noise at Court Philippe-Chatrier, too, because another one of their own, Richard Gasquet, could be playing the final match of his career when he takes on No. 1 Jannik Sinner.

At night in Chatrier, No. 5 Jack Draper of Britain takes on yet another French veteran, Gael Monfils. No. 2-seeded Coco Gauff, against Tereza Valentova, and No. 3 Jessica Pegula, against Ann Li in an all-American match, are among the top women in action, along with No. 6 Mirra Andreeva against Ashlyn Krueger of the United States.