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As Viktor Axelsen takes his second gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics in a relatively dominant fashion by beating all his opponents in straight sets, everyone is wondering how one can beat him.
Sure, people have taken matches off of Axelsen here and there recently, but never as consistently as players such as Lee Chong Wei, Lin Dan, and most notably, Kento Momota.
You may know that out of the 17 times that Axelsen has played Momota, Axelsen has only won three times. These three wins were in 2014, 2021, and 2022.
Given that Momota played his best between 2018 and 2020, this means Axelsen has never beaten prime Momota.
How does prime Kento Momota always win against Viktor Axelsen? What does he do so differently from the other players?
Well, let’s start with Momota’s strategy.
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Arguably, the biggest weakness of tall players is their ability to turn and control their upper body. The added mass makes tall players turn much slower and require significantly more energy to move compared to shorter players.
Momota understands this fact extremely well. When he plays against Axelsen, you’ll notice that he often plays a four corner style with the goal of making Axelsen turn as much as possible.
This strategy coupled with Momota’s shot quality is what makes Axelsen have such a hard time.
Currently, there is no player that can bring Axelsen to the front and then push him to the back like Momota can.
What makes Momota so special is his drops. He consistently plays drops that are tight to the net, fast, and still manage to land in front of the service line.
Additionally, what’s important to note is also how Momota maintains his pace while playing these drops. His recovery is fast and allows him to quickly move to the net and push Axelsen to the back before he even recovers.
This forces Axelsen to use even more energy trying to get up faster and prevents Axelsen from using his deadly attack.
Current pro players just don’t do this anymore. Their drops and slices are either too far from the net or they slow down their movement too much when they play tight to the net. Both situations are easier for Axelsen to handle as he doesn’t need to bend down or has time to recover respectively.
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Since current pro players are unable to beat Axelsen in a rally style the way that Momota was able to, they opt to play flat and fast games with a ton of direction change instead.
If you look at the games that Axelsen has lost in the past four years, most of his opponents opted for a lot of cross smashes and slices followed by sprinting forward to try to drive at the net.
This is a strategy that works well against Axelsen because tall players have a hard time quickly changing direction and defending against body attacks.
There is a good reason why players don’t consistently win against Axelsen playing like this, though. It’s because the style is one dimensional and consumes far too much stamina.
If Axelsen is focused and slows down the pace by pushing higher, it is very difficult to repeatedly jump smash and rush forward without burning out.
It is also important to note that you can’t just rally against Axelsen either. Otherwise, he’ll just start anticipating the net and positioning forward so that he doesn’t have to bend his back.
What makes prime Momota unstoppable is that he has his rally play but also pace injections that make his tight drops more effective.
When Momota plays against Axelsen, he will play to the four corners about 60 to 70 percent of the time. The other times, however, he’ll jump out and go for smashes either toward Axelsen’s backhand or body.
Since prime Momota had a very good smash, Axelsen had to respect this and position further back. That means every time Momota played a drop, Axelsen would often end up in a situation where he bends his back and inevitably end up burning stamina to chase the bird.
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In addition to prime Momota’s ability to rally and inject pace, he was also in peak physical and mental condition.
When you watch prime Momota play Axelsen, you’ll see that he’s never really affected by anything. Our guess is that he doesn’t feel the need to ever win the rally.
The mindset is that as long as the rallies are long and Axelsen is forced to expend a lot of energy, Axelsen will ultimately lose to himself.
And this is what often happened.
Prior to 2021, Axelsen just wasn’t confident in playing long rallies. He was used to winning the rally in a few shots from his deadly attack and did not play enough players who could neutralize him the way that Momota did.
When you work so hard and see that your opponent isn’t even breaking a sweat, it’ll make you feel the need to do something extra.
And that’s what happened to Axelsen, but only because Momota was one of the few players that could consistently force Axelsen to dig deep at the front due to his drop shot quality and pace injections.
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What do you think, though? Were these the reasons prime Momota always beat Axelsen? Will there ever be a player in the near future that can do what Momota did?
Let us know in the comments below.
Additionally, if you liked this video, make sure to hit the like and subscribe button so you don’t miss out. The next video will be about why current Axelsen has a much stronger chance at beating prime Momota.
Stay tuned!