Fil-Am Zekken makes case as best Valorant player in the world
Sentinel star and Filipino-American Zachary “Zekken” Patrone continues to make his case as one of the best, if not the best, Valorant players in the world and it was very much evident during his team’s title run in the recently concluded VCT 2024: Masters Madrid.
Not only did Zekken star in the Sentinels’ 3-2 Grand Finals win over Gen.G, enough for him to bag the Most Valuable Player honors, but he did it in a historic fashion, tying the record of most kills in a best-of-five match.
With signature picks Raze and Jett on his hand, Zekken dazzled with an overall KDA of 101/85/29 highlighted by 27 first-blood kills across all the five maps.
He was a kill shy of breaking the record he now shares with Max “Demon1” Mazanov, who achieved the same feat in the 2023 Valorant Champions lower bracket final.
“I would say it’s just experience. I’ve put a lot of games into both Raze and Jett which are the two I play today and putting all that time so I can understand situations a bit better than when I first started,” said Zekken, who also became the first Filipino to ever win a title in an international VCT event.
“It’s a difficult balance between being really aggressive and trying to go in and make space for your team and understanding when you need to live and when it’s important for you to play your life but the more that I played, the better I got at it and now I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of it,” he explained.
Even more impressive was how the 19-year-old star seamlessly transitioned from his previous initiator role into the team’s duelist in just months span since taking over the role.
“A lot of just me getting rocked in a bunch of games and over and over trying to learn the role but I’ve got insane teammates that supported me all the way like the best utility possible and they make life really easy so the transition was hard at first but now it’s great,” he added.
Although representing the North American region, the success of Zekken, whose mother is a Filipina, was a delight to most Filipino Valorant fans especially since PH teams had not done much success in the International stage so far.
The country had fairly produced some of the best Valorant players in the region, among those is the veteran duelist Jayvee “Dubstep” Paguirigan who now currently plays for Oasis Gaming in the Valorant Challengers PH.
