Port Washington: Schacht, since the knee, stopped caring and got better
He really doesn’t care all that much whether he wins anymore, since first the Crohn’s and then the knee at sixteen. He’d probably now describe his desire to win as a preference, nothing more. What’s singular is that his tennis seems to have improved slightly in the two years since he stopped really caring.
Context
Schacht is the paradox's living demonstration, arrived at by injury rather than doctrine: the Crohn's and the ruined knee burned the ego out of his game, and "his desire to win" shrank to "a preference, nothing more" — whereupon, singularly, the tennis got better, "fuller, looser, its edges less jagged." The broken body freed from the urge to win is the quiet counter-model to Hal's grinding compulsion. It's why Schtitt warmed to him after the knee: Schacht accidentally reached the not-caring half of the creed the whole academy is trying to teach on purpose.