the Fresno case: the syndrome the whole academy is built to prevent
there are certain very talented jr. players who just cannot keep the lip stiff and fires stoked if they ever finally do achieve a top ranking or win some important event.
Context
The Clipperton saga generalized into E.T.A.'s core anxiety: some gifted juniors simply come apart "if they ever finally do achieve a top ranking or win some important event." The danger isn't failure, it's arrival — the body pointed at a goal for years and then destroyed by reaching it. This is the warning the plateaux-and-slogging pedagogy exists to answer: not how to win, but how to still be a person on the far side of winning.