ZywOo: CS:GO’s Next All-Star Awping Prodigy

ZywOo awping prodigy on Vitality is called “The French youngster”. He is the only player to come close to reaching Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev’s level of form in 2019, and he’s had an exciting early career.

ZywOo’s Background

Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut is an 18-year-old awping prodigy from France. He’s currently the most exciting young prospect in CS:GO and the success of his current team, Vitality, largely rests on his performances.

ZywOo has been involved in the French CS scene for nearly 5 years. His first recorded team in 2014 is a small side named dizLown. ZywOo delayed the start of his full professional career, playing on multiple semi-professional teams, until he was able to finish his education in France.

The young awper’s true promise was starting to show in his performances for French side aAa. ZywOo would regularly have great individual performances from the side and would often top the scoreboard in any games they played. ZywOo would start to gain notoriety when playing in the Mountain Dew League, where he had his fair share of highlight moments.

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ZywOo’s career really took off on Aug. 10, 2018, as this was the day he would sign with the newly formed French CS:GO project dubbed Team Vitality. The roster would originally be captained by veteran French support player Nathan “NBK” Schmitt and featured a wealth of experienced French Counter-Stike players that had been left out of G2’s ‘Super Team’ line-up.

ZywOo Starts with Vitality

The Vitality roster was initially a project that had potential, but also a huge degree of uncertainty as to their ability to succeed. ZywOo was similar in this regard. People knew that ZywOo had the explosive ability to take over games at tiers 2 and 3, but would he be able to transition those skills to the upper echelons of competition.

As the summer of 2018 was drawing to a close, Vitality was mainly playing in online qualifiers to try and earn themselves a spot on the LAN circuit. ZywOo frequently claimed the top of the scoreboard showing great talent under Vitality’s banner in these online qualifiers. However, ZywOo’s first big test would be at DreamHack Open Atlanta 2018 as playing on LAN can be a completely different environment to online qualifiers.

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Vitality’s first outing would be against ex-iBUYPOWER player Steel’s Ghost roster. The French, and ZywOo, looked a little shaky in this map as Vincent “Happy” Schopenhauer narrowly out fragged his teammate ZywOo. ZywOo soon found his form in the tournament, and Vitality would go on to win the DreamHack Open Atlanta 2018.

The MVP of this incredible tournament was none other than ZywOo. An impressive achievement at his first LAN for Vitality. Now the whole world would start to talk about the new young prospect from France.

2019: From Prospect to Prodigy

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Vitality would prove to have a great year for 2019. The beginning of the year saw little notable events for them. Vitality qualified for the Major but exited in the group stages.

Spring saw ZywOo and Co continue to play in Online Qualifiers and the Mountain Dew League in order to earn their way to the top of CS:GO. The big successes for Vitality would begin in the Summer of this year, beginning at Cs_summit 4.

ZywOo awping prodigy on Vitality

Cs_summit events are renowned for their more casual feel and social aspect for the players. Despite this, some of the world’s best teams would attend and the same was the case at the Cs_summit 4. Big Names like ENCE, escortesmeiganga, Team Liquid, and NRG attended the small LA-based LAN. Despite Vitality’s low expectations of success, ZywOo had an absolute monster of a tournament, aiding in Vitality’s victory over Liquid. His individual play earned him the MVP award of the tournament with an impressive 86.6 ADR (Average Damage per Round).

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The summer months have continued to allow ZywOo to develop as the accolades keep rolling in. The young French awper earned another MVP award at the ECS Season 7 Finals in London this past June. The real notable outing for ZywOo though was at the Legendary ESL One Cologne tournament this past July. At this event all of the best Counter-Strike teams were present. ZywOo managed to earn another MVP award in the Cathedral of Counter-Strike, despite his team not winning the tournament. He outperformed long-time No.1 s1mple and now at the Major he continues to look like an outstanding player.

ZywOo’s career is young and bursting with potential. Many wonder what heights he will shoot for next. He seems to be a long-term plan for Vitality; not like NBK.

Credit: Benjamin Hodge Mckenna