Before Victoria Mboko was the powerful wildcard who dispatched three Grand Slam champions at the Canadian Open this week, she was a four-year-old on a tennis court in Burlington, Ont., demanding to be fed balls to hit while her siblings trained.

Pierre Lamarche remembers Mboko standing on the baseline of the court as he coached her sister, Gracia, who is 10 years her senior and a talented tennis player in her own right who competed at the national level.

"That's how it all started," Lamarche, who eventually coached Mboko, too, told CBC's Heather Hiscox Thursday morning.

The day before, Mboko, now 18, had eked out a win in the Canadian Open semifinal against 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, 26. After losing the first set, Mboko mounted a nail-biting comeback.

"I knew that last ni

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