Orin's defection: Schtitt's diagnosis: still just lobbing, with the leg
Orin was still just only lobbing, Schtitt observed [...] but now with the leg instead, the only punting [...] Schtitt posited that Orin had stumbled by accident on a way, in this grotesquely physical and territorial U.S. game, to legitimate the same dependency on the one shot of lob that had kept him from developing the courage to develop his weaker areas, which this unwillingness to risk the temporary failure and weakness for long-term gaining had been the real herbicide on the carrot of Orin Incandenza’s tennis. [...] Puberty Schmüberty, as the real reason for burning down the inside fire for tennis, Schtitt knew.
Context
The pickup's core, the diagnosis that makes a whole career a body-shaped character flaw: Orin is "still just only lobbing... but now with the leg instead," having found in punting "a way... to legitimate the same dependency on the one shot of lob." Schtitt's reading discards the physical alibi — "Puberty Schmüberty" — and names the real cause as a moral one of the body: an "unwillingness to risk the temporary failure and weakness for long-term gaining," which "had been the real herbicide on the carrot." The lob was never a strength; it was cowardice with a beautiful arc, the refusal to be temporarily bad at something in order to eventually be good. The pedagogy here is total: how a body develops (or won't) is a diagnosis of the person, and the whole athletic project is the discipline of staying in your weakness long enough to grow.