The first game on each side was over, and the score seemed to have reached a stalemate.
Compared with Ochi Gekko's overwhelmingly dominant serve, Spain's Mars seemed to fall a little short.
He couldn't win a point outright with his serve; he still had to return his opponent's serve to score directly.
But the players on the sidelines and in the stands didn't see things as simply as the general audience did.
In their eyes, Spain's Mars and Sedah looked like the more competitive pair.
These days, every country had gathered extensive intelligence on the Japan Team's players. They might not know absolutely everything, but they knew them inside and out.
Ochi Gekko of the Japan Team was the kind of player who seemed to possess a powerful serving technique.
The power of his Mach Serve had already been demonstrated at the French World Cup two years ago.
Even then, it had been a technique beyond the level of ordinary professionals.
Now, two years later, the Mach Serve was even more powerful than before—simply peerless.
Mars himself wasn't known for his serve.
Yet in his first service game, he had decisively chosen to settle things with his serve, much like Ochi.
That wasn't because he was blindly confident in himself. It was, instead, an exceptionally sophisticated psychological contest.
Attacking your opponent's strength with your own weakness was a major taboo.
But if you could still get good results that way, it would give your own confidence a tremendous boost while also dampening your opponent's momentum.
As things stood, Spain's plan had worked.
At the very least, Mars had managed to achieve a result with his serve similar to Ochi Gekko's.
That had also made the rest of the Japan Team's match unpredictable.
It was Mori Juzaburo's turn to serve.
Tap,