Trailing two sets to zero, Alexis Lebrun overthrew the 4th in the world, the Japanese Tomokazu Harimoto (9-11, 10-12, 11-4, 11-9, 12-10), to reach the quarter-finals of the WTT Champions in Montpellier, after a breathtaking match.
Alexis Lebrun therefore showed that it was better than the 82 in mental assigned on his FUT card. This Friday, the 22-year-old from Montpellier had to draw deep on his resources to come back from a poorly started game and defeat the N.2 seed of the WTT Champions of Montpellier, Tomokazu Harimoto after a monumental match.
In this flagship match of the eighth, after the elimination the day before of his little brother Félix by Simon Gauzy, Alexis Lebrun seemed to lack a solution against the Japanese. But he didn't panic. His heroic defense on the 8th point of the second set won after a long standoff (5-3) made the 6,500 spectators in the Montpellier venue jump, without however preventing the Japanese from snatching the second set to lead two sets to nothing.
“It was completely crazy. At 2-0, I got really angry at the coaching. I had a good match, I had few regrets,” confided the eldest of the siblings to RMC Sport.
A completely crazy beauty
Revolted, Alexis Lebrun finally pocketed the third and fourth sets in a heated atmosphere. Even trailing by four points (4-8) in the deciding set, he further raised his level of play, gradually chipping away at his deficit before saving four match points and finishing 12-10, to the delight of the Hérault public.
“The good thing is going very badly but I tell myself that we are going point by point. Afterwards, I started to believe it. It is perhaps the best ping memory of my life. Matches like that will help us to be more numerous”, he says with emotion.
He will face Slovenian Darko Jorgic (N.7) on Saturday for a place in the last four (8:45 p.m.). Another Frenchman entered in the quarter-final, Simon Gauzy will face the Japanese Sora Matsushima earlier in the afternoon (3:15 p.m., to follow live on the Twitch and Youtube the RMC Sport).
