Clearly, you underestimated Iizuka. It's okay. It happens.
You were responding to my comment about Iizuka needing to overcome Kanak's vaunted service game (yes, that's sarcasm) and being better in the rally. No need to move the goalposts now to a separate hunch that didn't manifest, unless you seriously think that those first 4 games were representative of Iizuka and Kanak's typical game. Do you?
I could have sworn I saw her play in one of the European leagues. Just looked her results up on WTT, and amazingly she has a 3-0 win over Amy Wang at the 2024 Pan Am Champs in Women's Teams. But she also has multiple losses to Giulia Takahashi.
She plays 1. Bundesliga in Germany.
some players just focus on leagues, and not so much internationals.
I know that Iizuka is a good player especially when he's firing on all cylinders like he was in games 1-4 yesterday, and not as much in games 5-7. In fact I think he's actually better than Walker despite the 2-3 loss here.
Duran is in MLTT by the way. Well past his prime to play in MLTT despite being an 11 tine national champion (Robles has probably stolen his lunch lol). And he loses his fair share of matches too.
He finally figured out he was winning the rallies and stopped trying to end the point in the first 6 shots.
Yeah. Ishiy is stable but relatively soft, not as much quality pressure in the rally as he thought maybe.
It was his first match and not his hoke club like Kanak, I suspect he would have done better with some cannon fodder in a prior round to get match sharpened with less pressure.
Definitely a factor at play like it was for Kanak against Iizuka - coming in first match and getting punched after only having practice and not tournament matches for 3-5 days prior is like jumping in a cold pool lol.
