One of the things I think people should realize is, starting as an adult, with a chronic condition, NextLevel has worked pretty hard to figure out ways he could play that would help him improve and play at a decent level while not aggravating his condition too much and in spite of his physical limitations. To me, I am impressed by what he can do in spite of what he cannot.
In that first video, one thing that I think people were missing is that, despite all the mistakes and mishits, someone at a low level would not have the stroke mechanics, the way his racket pulls past the ball instead of banging into the ball, or the amount of spin. In spite of missing a lot, he is putting a lot of spin on the ball and a lot of pace. The key thing to see there is that he must be readying those long weird dead pushes wrong. It would be interesting to see if he started reading them better in the following games in that match.
NextLevel said he won the match 3-0 in spite of clearly not playing as well as he often can. But we all know that, playing against a pips player, especially in the first game, you can end up not looking very good as you feel out their pips: how the pips react, how they use them, what keeps coming back to you. So it might also be interesting to see the adjustments made in the next two games. But, NextLevel may not have even needed to make the adjustments if he knew he was able to win in many ways.
Anyway, I think it is extremely hard to tell someone's level from video. I can remember many times where I watched someone play and thought, "that person is way better than me. I have no chance." Only to find they were easy for me to play and beat despite how good they looked. It is more painful to remember all those countless times where I saw someone playing and thought, "I am going to smoke this guy. He can barely play." Only to find that I got smoked instead.
I remember one time where Wally Green said to me: "this is the only F_cking sport where someone can look like they are a high level player and actually suck and someone else can look like they F_cking suck eggs and are actually a pretty high level player."
So, our sport, which is also a game, has this complication where there is so much precision and technical detail involved and it does not simply rely on sheer power, that there is a lot of space for all kinds of unique play styles that may not look aesthetically pleasing, but are effective and work up to a level.
