Little Buddy in Wayne's group: ventriloquizing the mastery doctrine

texture · 3 Nov YDAU

• When: Tuesday 3 November YDAU, late afternoon — the pre-dinner Big Buddy group-interface hour
• What: In Viewing Room 5, Chu is one of four Little Buddies (with Peterson, McKenna, van Vleck) in John Wayne's Big Buddy group — and does nearly all the talking, expounding off index cards, in textbook cross-legged posture, what he frames as Wayne's concept of tennis mastery: progress through plateaux ("Plateaux. With an X," Wayne corrects) and the three types who fail to slog off one (the Despairing, the Obsessive, the Complacent). Van Vleck challenges whether this is really Wayne's advice at all, implying a known habit of impersonation, and Chu and Peterson send him optical daggers while Wayne confirms he's said all he has to say. The same scene fixes Chu's rung in the sub-14 pecking order: Arslanian is under Chu, who is "on an odd year" and under Possalthwaite.