Oh, come on. Nobody plays like that. Enough with the cool-anime-pose badminton

And in the end just like I predicted earlier, contrary to how the mangaka desperately keeps wanting to match Ayano up against blonde opponents who he equally desperately wants to portray as invincible final bosses he can't get it over his himself to portray Nagisa as a real challenge to Connie.
We're supposed to believe Ayano needs to fight a demon lord instead of an ordinary talented badminton player in order for us to be able to cheer her on, but we don't need that for Connie?
Worse still, while what made Connie so unique a creation at first was her inner turmoil, now just like with Ayano the mangaka seems determined to pretend that earlier Connie never existed and portray her as a one-dimensional fan-servicey always smiling trope.
This manga has gone downhill ever since Ayano and Nagisa's amazing match. Every match since then has been a big load of nonsense and cool-anime-poses while the story skimmed over the matches. And it's only getting worse. It really seems like the publisher strong-armed the writer into focussing less on the matches and changing the fun story-telling for heaps of fanservice. The second part of the anime was heaps and bounds above this trope-filled tripe.