A victory three matches to zero. Stated like this, the result of the round of 16 between France and Poland at the World Team Championship organized in Busan (South Korea) could suggest a walk in the park for the Blues. Which was not the case at all. Already due to the diesel mode activated by the French who, from Félix Lebrun at the opening to Simon Gauzy at the conclusion, including Alexis Lebrun in between, all lost the first set. A bad habit that will have to be lost very quickly so as not to be disillusioned on Thursday in the quarter-finals against Portugal’s Marcos Freitas, the 19th in the world, much more experienced and dangerous than the Poles.
Thus, first in action, Félix Lebrun let Milosz Redzimski race in the lead to win the first set (10-12). Fortunately, behind, the 6th in the world resolutely took the direction of operations in this very juvenile duel since it pitted two table tennis players aged only 17 years old. But if the maturity of French has already impressed the entire ping world, that of Pole has yet to be established. Without trembling, Félix Lebrun won the next three rounds without firing a shot (11-6, 11-2, 11-7). A simple warning at no cost. For Alexis Lebrun, the situation was similar for a long time with the loss of the first set (13-15), before the calm victory of the following two sets (11-6, 11-5). Except that instead of finishing in four sets like his little brother, the elder Lebrun was wrong to let Jakub Dyjas, only 110th in the world, come back to the level (10-12) and take him into a perilous last round…
Clearly in the lead in this one (9-3), Alexis Lebrun still had a final scare when he saw the Pole come back a length (9-8), before finishing two points later (11-8) . New warning free of charge. It then remained for Simon Gauzy, 30th in the world, to get rid of a player he meets daily within the German club where he plays. The kind of meeting that is never easy to approach. And Samuel Kulczycki was going to take care of making the Frenchman tremble when he led 11-7, then 10-7 and three balls from two sets to nothing. But Gauzy then had enough resilience not to give up, dismissing four set points and getting back to one set everywhere (13-11). The outcome was still tight but the Frenchman managed to gain the upper hand (11-8, 12-10) to clinch the affair and validate his team’s qualification for the quarter-finals.
