Victoria Mboko was a picture of frustration as a double collapse in the first set allowed American Hailey Baptiste to take control and earn a 7-6 6-3 victory at Wimbledon on Thursday.
Leading 5-2 in the first set, Mboko lost her feel in rallies and allowed Baptiste back into the match with some errant hitting. The American, ranked World No. 54, broke back to force a tie-break, which Mboko initially took control of with some beautiful hitting, including a stunning cross-court backhand.
At 5-2 up in the breaker, Mboko once again hit a series of wild shots, allowing Baptiste to level the score and earn a set point. Mboko caught a lucky net cord to reach 6-6, but then double-faulted to give Baptiste a second set point, which the American converted with a beautiful drop shot.
Serving at 0-1 in the second set, Mboko was visibly distracted when two spectators took seats in her player’s box. After a brief argument, the umpire allowed them to stay in order to keep the match flowing.
The distraction, coupled with her mind likely still reeling from the first set, led Mboko to gift an early break to Baptiste. The American, despite landing just 57% of her first serves in the match, didn’t look back, mixing in a variety of slices and drop shots to draw more errors from the visibly annoyed Canadian.
The match drew to a close just shy of 100 minutes when Mboko sliced a Baptiste backhand into the net.
Mboko’s defeat leaves Canada without a singles representative in either the men’s or women’s draw, after Félix Auger-Aliassime fell to Jan-Lennard Struff in four sets earlier in the day.
Baptiste can look forward to a third-round clash with seventh seed Mirra Andreeva, while Mboko, though disappointed with her performance today, can take a lot of positives from two months of progress, having made back-to-back Grand Slam main draws for the first time and broken into the top 100.
