Leffen was extremely dismayed at his performance in the Los Angeles-based tournament, and took to Twitter to express his emotions.
Renowned Super Smash Bros. Melee player William "Leffen" Hjelte, who participated in Smash Summit 12 over the weekend, took to Twitter yesterday expressing his profuse disappointment over his own performance at the event.
In a series of tweets that he has since deleted, Leffen himself referred to his loss versus Cody "iBDW" Schwab, in a Fox ditto that went 3-2 in the latter's favor. Leffen, who placed first in his pool with a match score of 2-1, would go up 2-0 in the first to three set between him and iBDW — only to "throw the set in the bag" and allow his opponent to pull off the reverse sweep.
Leffen pointed primarily to his own mental struggles as of late, saying that he wasn't actually ready to compete like he normally is. Despite being a decorated veteran, even someone as good and consistent as he is can still run into mental hurdles at the top level.
To this end, Leffen admitted in a later tweet that he just "wasn't ready to compete", and that "it showed" in the event itself.
Wrong Place, Right Time?
Unfortunately, this all resulted in him beating himself up on the internet quite badly. Leffen even went as far as to say that "no win could ever make up for this", which is of course is quite an exaggerated statement given his accomplishments over the years.
Moreover, it seems that Leffen thinks that he has hit his "ceiling" playing primarily in Europe. He would later go on to tweet that he regrets being unable to move to the United States to get some more practice against players there. Leffen cites family as the primary reason for him being stuck where he is, both in a geographical and competitive sense.
As an additional result of his own defeat at Smash Summit, Leffen also tweeted that he might not attend Smash World Tour (SWT), which takes place in Orlando, Florida on December 17th. He qualified for SWT via the Europe regional tournament, where he won the grand finals 3-0 over Alvaro "Trif" Garcia Moral.
It's clear that Leffen is still in good form mechanically, given his results this year. His mental state definitely isn't in the best spot right now, though, so based on his tweets it may be a while before we see him competing in Melee again.