In September 2010, the 13 year old Cho “Maru” Sung Choo steps in the booth to play his first televised StarCraft 2 match. It is the very first season of the GSL and with all eyes fixated on the cream of the crop of Korean competition and the youngster is hard to miss.
The young boy is ridiculed by some but many applaud his bravery and ambition. BroodWar fans make the comparison between him and the legendary Terrans Baby and Flash who also broke out on the scene at tender ages and went on to become established names in the scene. Maybe Maru could do the same one day, the community said, wouldn’t that be some story to tell.
Maru didn’t do that, not then at least. He won his first televised match against Cell but was eliminated in the next round by San and so his GSL story was over. He did not return for the next season and went off the radar for a whole year. He briefly reemerged in August 2011 but it was another one-season appearance before he was gone again. Not until next year would Maru become a common sight in professional StarCraft.
Photo: Skanarky
2012 was more successful for the young Terran but only by a small margin. He spent most of the year (as well as half of 2013) in Code A. His two Code S appearance were mostly a pretext for casters to bring out the ubiquitous “he’s only 15 but very good”. Until the summer of 2013, Maru was just another Korean Terran with nothing to bring to the the table but his age.
In June 2013, Maru’s came out stronger than ever before and created what was possibly the break-out story of the year. Beating the group stages of OSL sent him to where he never was before – to premier tournament playoffs. Maru’s playstyle was ferocious and this time there wasn’t a note of courtesy praising and political correctness when his skill was brought up for discussion. His macro was unrelenting, his micro and multitasking unmatched. StarCraft writers described him as an amalgam of all Prime Terrans before him and he really was that – a player with no flaws, a champion material at 16. The comparison with the legendary Flash was made again and it was way more accurate this time around.
The OSL bracket paired Maru with the very best of the tournament as to encumber the youngster into kneeling down but it only made his victorious run more heroic. The one-sided 3-1 against GSL finalist Symbol was effaced by the even more impressive 4-0 against GSL runner-up and WCS Season 1 champion Innovation, at the time still considered to be among the strongest players in the world. Finally, when SKT’s ace Rain tried to stop the Prime Terran and dealt him two losses right from the start, Maru simply came back with four in a row to create history.
Thanks to the autonomy of the OSL brand within the WCS circuit, Maru exited the booth the youngest royal-roader in the history of the league and the second youngest champion since Flash. He would be the first to take the road in 2013 but, fortunately, he would not be the last.
Photo: This is game
It wasn’t long before the StarCraft 2 scene saw another player walk the royal road. Over at the last GSL for the year, Baek “Dear” Dong Jun of team SouL was trying to make a name for himself and finish 2013 with a championship in his hands.
Dear wasn’t the favorite to win the GSL by any stretch. He and his team were not doing well in GSTL and fans were right to doubt the Protoss despite his invaluable help with pushing STX to a Proleague championship. Innovation had left for Acer and the attention that SouL got was even smaller. With SKT’s PartinG and Rain in the GSL pool, Dear wasn’t exactly community’s first choice for a Protoss champion.
But that’s the very beauty of the royal road, after all. It’s the ultimate break-out story, the pauper-gone-prince transformation that comes out of nowhere and catches everybody by surprise. Dear walked the road with confidence rarely seen in a premier league debutant. He had missed the first two seasons of WCS Korea but he acted like he’d always belonged there. “It doesn’t matter who I play,” he repeated in interviews and indeed it didn’t. The kingly clothes he eventually donned fit him as if they were tailor-made.
As he defeated Supernova, DongRaeGu, Sleep, Trap, Maru and soO, Dear walked the steps towards a very special end of the year. He didn’t become the youngest GSL champion, nor was he the first to make such a royally break-out this year. He wasn’t even the first SouL player to take a championship or the first Protoss royal roader in StarCraft 2 history: Innovation and Rain had already beaten him to that.
What Dear accomplished was set up a red carpet that would lead him to becoming the first player to ever win a regional and seasonal championship back-to-back. He became the fastest climbing player in the WCS rankings, going up 116 spots in two weeks. By the end of October, Dear was among the most recognized Protoss players on the scene, his quest of getting out of his team-mates shadows finally accomplished.
To become a royal roader along the way… well, that was a nice bonus.
Photo: Thisisgame
So far on "12 days of Christmas":
Day 1: 1 recognized professional athlete
Day 2: 2 royal roaders
Day 3: The 3rd annual GosuAwards
