There are three predominant ways folks discussed Naomi Osaka’s resurgent run to the final in Montreal this week. All three of them are technically correct, but all three, I think, miss the real factors at play in her apparent return to competitive relevance.

The first is that Osaka’s great run was thanks to the arrival of Tomasz Wiktorowski, the veteran coach who guided Agnieszka Radwanska and Iga Swiatek through the strongest stretches of both of their careers.

Wiktorowski is a great, proven coach, and he has surely been a positive presence this week in Osaka’s corner. But I don’t think that any coach can change the fortunes of a player within just a few days of meeting her in any meaningful way. Wiktorowski almost certainly represented a positive vibe shift, but it’s tough to know from one week what the long-term returns will be on this partnership.

More than the addition of Wiktorowski, what I think helped Osaka’s equation pay short-term dividends was the subtraction of Patrick Mouratoglou.

Mouratoglou is a smart guy and a savvy businessman with a lot of good ideas about how to grow tennis, but I was never convinced he was a good match for Osaka. His best-known chapter as a coach—helping Serena Williams usher in a second act that put her in the Greatest of All Time conversation—might’ve augured well for his work with Osaka; Osaka also did very well for herself when she previously employed a former Williams coach in Sascha Bajin. But Williams was much closer to peak form when Mouratoglou arrived in 2012 than Osaka was when Mouratoglou came to her late last year, and there’s not a one-size-fits-all fix to reinvigorating the career of another established superstar. 

Mouratoglou, too, also didn’t seem to have the focus or hunger for Osaka that he had while proving himself with Williams, spending lots of time and energy and oxygen on his own media pursuits in ways that only served to increase the noise around Naomi. Without any big titles together, the most memorable moment of their partnership might’ve been when Osaka was asked, at a pretournament press conference, what she thought of Mouratoglou’s comments on French television during Roland-Garros that “we’re in a period in women’s tennis where there are no major stars.” 

“I didn’t hear that,” Osaka said, betraying some annoyed surprise. “But I don’t know, maybe we should do a powwow about the things that he says. Totally off topic, but sometimes I scroll on Instagram and he pops up and I’m like, ‘Oh wow,’ and then I keep scrolling.”

Osaka has had no trouble generating headlines and attention of her own for the past five years, even without a force multiplier in her corner.

The second misconception is that this week in Montreal was Osaka’s best run since returning from pregnancy and maternity leave. This is true, but I think it’s the wrong framing to use when discussing what Osaka is rebounding from, exactly; she had already slipped far from her peak form well before becoming pregnant in late 2022 and missing the entire 2023 season.

The six matches in a row that Osaka won in Montreal were the longest win streak she’s had since what I think was the peak of her powers: a 23-match win streak that ran from summer 2020 into spring 2021, including her second titles at both the US Open and Australian Open. 

In my biography of Osaka, I borrowed a term from Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to describe Osaka during that time: It was her “imperial phase.” Everything she touched seemed to turn to gold, and she seemed ready to run up the score on court and off; the New York Times Style section wrote a feature called “How Naomi Osaka Became Everyone’s Famous Spokesmodel.”

 But right at that apex, Osaka started slipping steeply and then spectacularly, culminating with her withdrawal from the 2021 French Open after a standoff with tournament organizers over mandatory post-match press conferences. Osaka took a few short breaks after that but felt compelled to return to play the Tokyo Olympics—where she lit the cauldron in the Opening Ceremony—and to attempt to defend her title at the US Open. 

 From the start of 2018 to the 23-match win streak that ended at the 2021 Miami Open, Osaka was 111–36 (75.5%); from then until the beginning of her maternity leave, she was 20–15 (57.1%). Since her maternity leave she’s been 49–30 (62.0%), including the Montreal run that bumped her win rate up by a couple percentage points. I am not sure that whatever derailed Osaka back in 2021—perhaps the various mental health struggles she revealed, perhaps a loss of the hunger that once propelled her, perhaps something else entirely—has yet been adequately addressed.

This leads into the third and most important thing that I think the narratives got wrong about Osaka in Montreal: that, with this run, she is clearly “back.”

Yes, Osaka is likely to be seeded at the US Open later this month, her first time being seeded at a major since her title defense at the 2022 Australian Open. That’s a return to a certain status, to be sure.

But as someone who struggled for more than a year to figure out where her story was headed while writing a mid-career biography of her, the thing I am most confident of about Naomi Osaka is that she remains a moving target, difficult to keep in clear focus with any lens, for any length of time. She’s still growing, still evolving, still learning, still stumbling, still struggling. All humans are doing those things, sure, but with Osaka there’s always been a certain rawness to her visible turmoil that makes it all the more stark, vivid, and captivating. 

Her final match in Montreal was, ultimately, a brutal encapsulation of this. Osaka was the much better player at the start of the match, taking the first set 6–2 against the inexperienced Victoria Mboko, a local favorite for the Canadian crowd. But when the match should’ve still seemed firmly in her grasp early in the second set, at 6–2, 1–1, Osaka began to crash out. 

 First, a crosscourt forehand by Mboko landed near the line; Osaka had expected an out call that didn’t come and grew extremely frustrated extremely quickly, letting the tension of the moment show. When her first serve was called out on the next point, she sarcastically shouted, “I believe you, 100 percent!” toward the chair umpire. When Mboko broke for a 2–1 lead, Osaka dropped her racquet in exasperation, giving both Mboko and the crowd hope that the front-runner might be stumbling. 

 Indeed she was, and she never got it back together in the second hour of the match, or even after it. Several times she raced through her own service games, wanting to start the next point just a couple seconds after the previous one. 

After Mboko won 2–6, 6–4, 6–1, a despondent Osaka left the court and had to be cajoled back on by a WTA handler for the trophy ceremony. 

 Her eyes still watery, Osaka sounded unimpressed by the Montreal crowd cheering for her for the first time all night as she stood at the microphone. “Thanks, I guess,” she said as she began. 

Osaka’s speech lasted only 20 seconds—she conspicuously didn’t mention or congratulate Mboko—and ended with her coldly saying, “I hope you guys had a good night.” Predictably, many of the locals took umbrage at what they saw as a slight to their young new star hero. 

Osaka skipped her mandatory post-match press conference, but a couple quotes from her were released hours later, in which she admitted how quickly her own mind can turn on her and acknowledged her slight of Mboko.

“I think it’s kind of funny—this morning I was very grateful,” she said. “I don’t know why my emotions flipped so quickly. But I’m really happy to have played the final. I think Victoria played really well; I completely forgot to congratulate her on the court. Yeah, I mean, she did really amazing.”

Osaka’s second answer accepted the positive framing she was offered about how successful her first week with Wiktorowski had been.

“Yeah, obviously this tournament went really well,” she said. “It could have went better, but that’s just me being picky. I think it was a really good first tournament, and I hope that we can continue.”

Because they are often so compellingly unvarnished, Osaka’s emotional reactions to defeats often gain more attention than her victories. That pattern may well repeat itself after this loss, particularly after runner-up Karen Khachanov was wildly effusive about Ben Shelton in his post-loss remarks hours later in Toronto.

Osaka is aware of this trend and lamented it in a post on Threads hours after her loss at Wimbledon.

“Bro why is it every time I do a press conference after a loss the espns and blogs gotta clip it and put it up,” she wrote. “Wtf, why don’t they clip my press conferences after I win? Like why push the narrative that I’m always sad? Sure I was disappointed a couple hours ago, now I’m motivated to do better. That’s human emotions. The way they clip me I feel like I should be fake happy all the time.”

 Osaka is right: she’s definitely not “always sad.” She’s not “always” anything, really. Except, perhaps, continually compelling. No matter her coach, no matter her ranking, no matter if we—or she herself, even—have any idea what she might do next.

Victoria Mboko is the tennis tornado the game needs. We all love a prodigy narrative, and there’s nothing like a teenager tearing through draws. And nothing like a teen entering her home tournament, a WTA 1000, with a wild card, and ending up with the trophy after beating another former teen wonder, Naomi Osaka, to clinch the biggest title of a career that has just started.

After Carlos Alcaraz, who’s been defying gravity since winning the US Open at 19 in 2022, and Mirra Andreeva, who’s become a solid top 5 to top 10 player at just 17, the mantle, it seems, has now been passed to Victoria “Vicky” Mboko, an 18-year-old wonder from Canada. 

Mboko ended the 2024 season ranked 350th in the world, and now, not even a year later, she is guaranteed a spot in the top 30 (24). “I want to win every match I play,” Mboko told me back in March, and she still sings the same tune in August, saying after dispatching Coco Gauff in the round of 16 in Montreal last week: “When you play a tournament, the goal is to win it.” Tennis, made simple.

As Montreal is rightfully losing its mind over the epic run of the teenager, those who’ve been following Mboko’s season closely saw it coming. On her home soil, the Ontario native, from French-speaking Congolese parents, is displaying why she’s been, outside of the Slams, one of the best stories in the game. 

After beating Elena Rybakina to reach her maiden WTA 1000 final, Mboko became the first Canadian to defeat three former Grand Slam champions (Rybakina, Gauff, and Sofia Kenin) in a single WTA event in the Open Era. Osaka made four. And in one single match, she showed why she was turning all heads around this year: She has learned in less than a year how to play and manage matches like a top 10 player. She plays as if she already belongs.

It takes less than a minute for anyone watching Mboko play to stop, gasp, and wow. She possesses a level of effortless power and charisma that draws crowds, along with the risk-taking temperament that comes with it, and an infectious positive energy. She will leave opponents meters away from the ball, whatever their ranking or experience. Her tennis is the definition of bold and unimpressed. She also shows a nice tennis IQ and solid variety in her game. At 18, she walks out there and plays as if she has been playing that way for a decade. Of course, we know it’s easier at that age to swing freely, and that pressure will keep mounting. “We shouldn’t forget that it’s important she keeps smiling out there,” Noelle Van Lottum, who is on Mboko’s coaching team and is also head of women’s tennis at Tennis Canada, told me this year. “What’s most important is that everybody remains calm around her and that we keep helping her improve. Vicky needs to keep that joy to play.” It will be key to keep now more than ever. 

Yet her honeymoon phase is fascinating to witness, especially because it’s been percolating for a while. People discovering Mboko through her Montreal run need to understand she’s not a one-week wonder, because Mboko has been improving steadily all year. In the first six ITF events she played in 2025, she won five. When I had my first chat with her back in March, when Mboko was awarded a wild card for Miami’s WTA 1000, her record was 27–1. And she was as bubbly-but-determined about it all as she is now with her 53–9 record. 

Mboko is here to win big, that is all. She’s not a longtime Serena Williams fan for nothing. Yet she won’t get ahead of herself, as she already experienced how rough the journey could be when she got sidelined for six months last year due to a knee injury. That’s the thing we don’t want to dwell on, for fear of jinxing her—that Mboko’s main worry moving forward won’t be developing her game but managing her body. After the final, Mboko announced that she will skip Cincy to rehab a wrist injury she picked up during her semifinal against Rybakina, ahead of the US Open. The sport has just one job here: not burning that kid out. “I don’t have so many people around me, and it’s kept me very calm and very comfortable,” she told me this summer. Quiet off the court but enjoying the frenzy of a big court’s crowd is also Mboko’s recipe: She’s been swinging in Montreal in front of a packed crowd entirely devoted to her without being overwhelmed; another sign of a solid foundation. More? You can see she’s enjoying it.

 People will say that, with such power and physicality, one tends to move up the ladder quicker. True. But what is also making Mboko’s ascent to the top fascinating, like Andreeva’s, is how quickly she learns. She took over the ITF level in a winter, won her first match in a WTA 1000 in Miami in March, qualified for Rome and won a match before losing to Gauff in three sets in April, then qualified and got to the third round at Roland-Garros, was a match away from qualifying for Wimbledon, then got a lucky loser spot and won her first-round match. And she’s now in her first WTA 1000 final, becoming only the third wild card to achieve this in Canada in the Open Era after Monica Seles (1995) and Simona Halep (2015). She lost against Gauff in Rome and beat her in Canada. She lost against Rybakina in Washington and beat her in Canada. She learns at a speed that will scare a field already busy managing the Andreeva rise. What’s also both scary for her rivals and absolutely amazing for the rest of us is that Mboko is already that good despite having a huge margin of improvement. When they say the sky is the limit, she’s the definition of it.

The last Canadian woman to play in a final at home was Bianca Andreescu, who won there in 2019 and went on to win the US Open. She could be a good example for Mboko, as her rise was also spectacular, but the journey kept getting harder. Mboko, like Andreescu, isn’t a hype; she’s the real deal. It’s no guarantee to become the next Serena, Maria, Iga, Aryna, or Naomi, but it’s a great chance to have a fair shot at it. “To get this result in a tournament like this is a huge turning point for me,” said the teen wonder in Montreal, already aware of how a tennis journey can be slowed or fast-forwarded. In Montreal, it may have skyrocketed.