the V.R.5 collapse: Lyle's fear-drill has no off-court setting
Lyle had taught us this. You perceive things very intensely. Lyle’s counsel had been to turn the perception and attention on the fear itself, but he’d shown us how to do this only on-court, in play.
Context
The weight-room guru's whole technique for panic — turn the attention on the fear itself — was issued as a match tactic, "only on-court, in play." Hal has the doctrine but not the terrain: the body-conditioning that would let him metabolize the dread is court-bound equipment, useless the moment the court is a hallway. The regimen builds a beautifully specialized instrument and then leaves it stranded off the one surface it was tuned for.