Port Washington: John Wayne's automatic beauty
There’s surprisingly little thought. Coaches tell serious players what to do so often it gets automatic. John Wayne’s game could be described as having a kind of automatic beauty.
Context
Wayne chasing down a lob is the regimen's telos made visible: "surprisingly little thought," because "coaches tell serious players what to do so often it gets automatic." His "automatic beauty" is exactly what E.T.A.'s repetition-pedagogy is for — the body drilled so far past deliberation that grace becomes involuntary. It is the physical embodiment of the paradox this scene will name at its close: the player who cares enough to have done the ten thousand reps, and no longer has to care in the moment because the body simply knows.