Pan Pacific Open Round-Up: Victoria Mboko's return to winning ways continues with Eva Lys win

Victoria Mboko failed to win a single game since she managed to seal the Canadian Open earlier this year in Montreal but has shown that confidence is just the ticket when it comes to her resurgence as she eased past the in-form Eva Lys at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

The 19-year-old won in under an hour on Wednesday in Tokyo to reach the Quarter-Finals, it is only the second Quarter-Final on the main tour of her young career. The other one, of course gleamed the ultimate prize for the Canadian albeit set expectations perhaps too high that she failed to deal with them.

She broke to open the match and won the first set in just 25 minutes committing just two unforced errors and dropping three points on serve. The second set was no foot off the accelerator as she backed it up with a identical foray and eased through. She faced just one break point saving it with some ease as Lys never particularly mounted a serious threat against her serve and it showed.

It is a second win over Lys this season and she has now racked up five 'breadsticks' in her career (6-1 set wins) showing the dominance when she can get it. She lost just eight points on serve but wildly only half of those came in the last game when she was closing it out.

She finished with 10 unforced errors and 12 winners showing how clean her display was. The delay also for Linda Noskova vs McCartney Kessler took more time than Mboko took to defeat Lys, pretty damning for the German who has showed such promise as of late and took to socials afterwards to again showcase a barrage of abuse aimed at her for losing a tennis match.

“I wanted to just be myself and try to play very aggressively,” Mboko said after the match. “I didn’t really have much of a game plan. I just wanted to play freely and just be very positive with myself on court. So, I think I checked all the marks today, and it all worked out at the end of the day.”

Elsewhere Noskova like alluded to faced Kessler and the recent Wuhan finalist won through against Kessler who is similar to Mboko in that the American sealed multiple big wins earlier in the year then barely won a game for a long period. She lost here though to the Czech ace who is on a serious roll right now winning 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 after losing the first set. Diana Shnaider also faced off against Anna Kalinskaya with the latter Russian prevailing in a tight three setter. Winning the first 7-6, she lost the second 6-2 quite easily and then came back to snare it in a close tie-break. The last game of the day is currently on as Maya Joint, the rising Aussie faces off against Karolina Muchova who has shown form herself at times recently but is also prone to an early exit.

Joint will hope to join Mboko in continuing to fulfill her undoubted promise once more and see off Muchova to reach the Quarter-Finals. A real top quality day in Tokyo but Mboko is certainly the leading story.