TenZ: “Nobody’s like faker, nobody’s like s1mple where they’re way above the competition”

Sentinels player Tyson “TenZ” Ngo is widely considered to be the best VALORANT player in the world, having attended multiple Masters tournaments now. He has some of the best statistical performances of any player in the world and has taken his team to the peak of competition. 

Yet TenZ believes that it isn’t possible to dub anybody the best player in the world, even himself. 

The G2 match at Masters Berlin

The 20-year old TenZ just came off the back of a historic defeat to G2 Esports at VALORANT Masters Berlin. Sentinels had previously not lost a single match offline, until now. Wednesday during Masters in Berlin, Germany, G2 took down Sentinels 2-0 in a seeding match. TenZ spoke to Upcomer following the defeat to discuss his status as a player. 

Following the loss, TenZ said he did not perform to his usual standard. “I definitely did not perform as I normally do. And I’m not really too sure why,” he said. He picked up the Reyna for both maps, his most played Agent, and finished the match with a 205 average combat score, his lowest of the event so far. 

TenZ, alongside Hunter “SicK” Mims were typically the first two players to fall in most rounds, nullifying two of the strongest threats on Sentinels’ side. TenZ was only able to pick up one first kill during the match, the lowest on his team alongside Jared “zombs” Gitlin, according to VLR.gg. 

While this performance is typically out of character for TenZ, he told Upcomer that he struggled with sleep and he woke up at around 7:00 AM after a long day of feature work yesterday. 

TenZ doesn’t consider himself the best in VALORANT

Regardless of TenZ’s individual VALORANT Masters performance on Wednesday, many consider him to be the best player in the world. Individually he boasts the third highest average damage per round with 185.7 so far at Masters Berlin. That said, he has played the most number of rounds compared to Envy player Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker and Olavo “heat” Marcelo, who sit slightly above him. 

But TenZ believes it’s too early to consider anyone the best in the game. “I actually don’t really think that you can bestow any player as the best in the world, as of right now,” he said. 

“Nobody’s like Faker, nobody’s like s1mple where they’re just way above the competition. You have a handful of really top performers, but everybody can keep improving and there’s nobody way ahead of the game currently,” TenZ said. 

TenZ instead believes that his confidence makes him the player that he is, ensuring that he never doubts himself, regardless of the situation. “I just play with a lot of confidence and coming up in my time from CS, I’ve learned that it’s a lot more of a mental game than you think, and confidence can bring you a long way and especially you can make decisions,” he said. 

Sentinels face off against Korean team F4Q tomorrow in the last match of Group D.