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Clutch, featuring Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon, Nam “Lira” Tae-yoo, Tanner “Damonte” Damonte, Sun “Cody” “Cody Sun” Li-Yu and Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme, had to run the gauntlet this weekend, facing Flyquest, Counter Logic Gaming and Team SoloMid on consecutive days.<\/p>
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Their matches against Flyquest and CLG were fairly convincing; both 3-1 wins, not blowouts but they looked comfortable. It wasn’t until the final match against TSM, North America’s most well-known, most popular team, that Clutch finally came up against a team that was going to cause them some real issues.<\/p>
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TSM took a 2-0 lead in the best-of-5 series and, despite the fact that they weren’t hugely convincing wins, it still put Clutch on the back foot with no margin for error. It simply came down to a necessity to not let TSM continue getting their huge early game leads, or risk losing it all.<\/p>
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Last year was the first time TSM hadn’t competed at Worlds after a very rough season, but they can add Worlds 2019 to that list now as Clutch showed unreal levels of composure to not only win Map 3 with ease, but to continue their form into the next two matches and put the team that was once NA’s only hope in the dirt.<\/p>