On September 29 2021 14:21 FataLe wrote: Has anyone ever won their last GSL?
No, as far as I've checked it nobody comes even close. Most of the odd one of winners (RorO, Sniper, Seed, etc.) tried it a couple of more times after their wins. All the early winners (Mvp, Fruitdealer, NesTea, MC) kept trying it long after their peak had passed. From 2016 onwards most of the GSL winners are either still competing or even came back from the military.
The players who come the closest to winning the GSL before retiring / going to the military are TY and Rain. Both won their second to last GSL (TY GSL S3 2020; Rain GSL S2 2015) but both ended up in 13-16th place in the group stages of their last GSL.
If Zest retires after this one, he will definitely be the player with the best result in his last GSL - no matter if he gets second place or even win the whole thing.
Right? With a third GSL win, it definitely bolstered his resume to the higher among the GOAT players like Maru, Innovation and Rogue even surpassing the Protoss GOAT contenders like MC, sOs, Rain, Stats, Classic and Trap. Besides sOs and Parting, Zest also has bagged one gold and two silvers for his world championship run.
Adds a nice symmetry to his career too, winning his first and last GSL entries.
Zest bringing the builds and playing brillantly... nothing less would've defeated Rugue. I hope he wins this GSL, becoming the Protoss GOAT in his last match. Beautiful history.
Everyone who follows Zest knows that sometimes he just plays weird and off or makes strange choices. Those matches were not unusual at all Especially when he's a guy who plays hundreds of online and insignificant matches every year and experiments around with different styles more than any other protoss.
He was favoured to win and rightfully so, but for the first two games, Zest basically played with only 2 gases, building up a Gateway army against Terran bio while floating 1K minerals.
Yeah and this turned out to be how Zest would play PvT going forward. There's nothing wrong with trying out new styles in some random online matches and them not working the first few times.
This has to be one of the greatest bo7 victories of all time.
Zest wasn't just fighting Rogue and matchpoints, he was fighting history. And somehow he managed to find a way out despite looking super dead in both of the last two games.
EPT
